Detroit Tigers: Eric De La Rosa is heading to the AFL

It appears that Detroit Tigers outfielder Riley Greene is not heading to the Arizona Fall League. Eric De La Rosa takes his place.

An IBWAA writer by the name of Benjamin Chase tweeted out that it appears on various national sites that Detroit Tigers outfielder Riley Greene will not be playing in the Arizona Fall League this year.

So I and co-editor Chris Brown dug around to confirm and sure enough, a few different links had him not on the Salt River Rafters roster but instead, outfielder Eric De La Rosa, who had an excellent season between three different levels, Lakeland, West Michigan, and Erie. He batted 273/.367/.440 (124 wRC+) with 22 doubles, 7 triples, 8 homers, and 34 steals.

Here is the Salt River Rafters roster as of today via MLB.com. https://www.mlb.com/arizona-fall-league/teams/salt-river-rafters 

Another one can find be found below:

The reason why Riley Greene is not playing in the AFL

During the second to last game for Toledo on Saturday, October 2nd, Greene had a minor collision in the outfield with Jacob Robson. He stayed in the game but did not play on the last day of the regular season.

Cody Stavenhagen of the Atheltic confirmed the story that Greene will be out due to a concussion in the play above.

Greene along with Josh Lester ended up being on the Double-A Northeast end-of-the-season All-Star team. At Erie, he put up an impressive slash at the age of 20, .298/.381/.525 with an OPS of .905 with 16 home runs and 55 RBI. He posted an impressive OPS of .934 in 31 games with Mud Hens and kept at both levels, a walk rate at 11%.

This will be an opportunity for De La Rosa to showcase his skill set and show why he was on Baseball America’s Under-the-Radar prospect list. ($)

Until the team puts out an official news release, we here at Motor City Bengals are going by what was reported by Cody Stavenhagen this afternoon. The season begins this week on Wednesday as Salt River takes on Peoria at 12:35 pm.