LAKELAND, Fla. — Down near the Philadelphia Navy Yard, people are starting to know Kevin George McGonigle as the father of baseball’s No. 2 prospect. But to know how his son got this far, there are a few more things to understand.
Kevin George is a marine machinist. He has a strong Philly accent and instant blue-collar credibility. He played ball along with his twin brother back in the day before they both joined the Army. Now, he’s the type who finds old-school fulfillment in being part of a larger whole that helps get submarines out to sea.
“It’s a group effort to work for our country,” he said via phone, commuting to work on a Sunday.
Kevin George takes pride in his work but takes more pride in his youngest son. They share the same first name but have different middle names. Kevin George and Kevin Patrick. Little Kevin Patrick McGonigle was the last of three children.
“Full of piss and vinegar and energy from Day 1,” his father said.
The youngest McGonigle grew up to be a 5-foot-10 ball of fury, a dirt devil on the infield, but a clean-cut, mild-mannered young man behind the scenes. He hits from the left side with lightning quick hands. His contact skills have made him the toast of the Detroit Tigers organization and put him in position to debut this season. His upbringing shaped everything about his game.
Kevin George and his ex-wife, Tracy, divorced when McGonigle was young, but they worked together to raise the kids. For a while, Kevin George was working the midnight shift at a water utilities company. Tracy worked a day shift as an administrative assistant at the same place. Kevin George’s shift ended around the time Tracy was heading to work. They’d meet and make the exchange, and on summer mornings, father and son would venture out to a friend’s spacious backyard.
Out there, Kevin George set up a cage and a three-wheeled Jugs pitching machine. He called it the three-headed monster. He made the contraption replicate split-finger fastballs. He put the thing 55 feet from home plate and cranked it as fast as it could go.
In an age of highly-paid instructors and high-tech facilities, this is where one of the best prospects in the sport forged his skill.
“People would ask, who’s his batting coach?” Kevin George said. “Who’s this? Who’s that? I’d say, ‘Well, he doesn’t have a batting coach.’ … What he did was he listened. We knew he had talent. I pretty much shoved baseball up his ass for a lot of years, and he took to it.”
If the elder Kevin McGonigle seems intense, that’s just his nature. He was raised in Darby, Pa., a working-class town in Delaware County. His father owned an auto shop. Kevin George came from a big family, with loving but strict parents.
Raising his own son, they would work from 9 a.m. to 11 on these mornings. One bucket of balls after another.
“It was like watching Larry Bird shoot 1,000 shots a day,” Kevin George said.
He even made his son read Bird’s book, “Drive: The Story of My Life.”
“He had that shoved up his ass a couple times, too,” the father said.
When Kevin George wasn’t repeating lessons from Bird, he was showing videos of Tony Gwynn. That was Kevin George’s favorite hitter. He loved his approach and his aptitude. He remembers a video where Gwynn discussed treating a baseball bat like a hockey stick.
“So you can put that puck anywhere you want it,” Kevin George said. “Put it in left field. Put it in right field. Put it up the middle. … I force-fed him Tony Gwynn, and he listened.”
It’s no surprise, then, that McGonigle is best known for his uncanny bat-to-ball skills. His swing is tight and compact. He has a quiet toe-tap and strong, violent wrists. Baseball America rated his hit tool, on the 20-to-80 scouting scale, an 80, a ridiculous grade no other player has achieved since Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in 2018. His hitting style is a minimalist work. Quick and to the point, efficient and effective.
“Listening to one person really helped me,” the younger McGonigle said. “There’s a lot of hitting coaches out there now that tell you all these different things. I think a lot of guys fall in that rabbit hole of listening to all these different voices. My dad and I, we did one thing.”
To say McGonigle took to baseball is an understatement. These days, he looks like a ballplayer, thinks like a ballplayer and swings a bat like someone who was born to do exactly this.
He resembles his father in terms of build. But where Dad is excitable, McGonigle is more reserved. Monday morning inside the Tigers clubhouse, McGonigle chuckled and shook his head when told his father had been interviewed.
“Did he say anything stupid?” he asked.
These days, Kevin George works the middle shift at the Navy Yards. He starts at 2 p.m. and goes until well after dark.
“I’m glad to work still,” he said. “But I’d rather be watching baseball for a living, I’ll tell you that.”
Kevin George laughs as he thinks about it. Down in spring training, his son’s days are a little different. Baseball in the day, golf in the evenings.
Don’t let the differences fool you. Much of the mentality is the same.
Said Kevin George: “He’s a middle-shifter, that kid.”
Tigers prospect Kevin McGonigle honed his swing in cage sessions with his father rather than working with a paid batting coach. (Courtesy: Kevin George McGonigle)
Sometimes in stories like these, the gritty baseball rat is an underdog overachiever, a late-bloomer who had to prove everyone wrong.
In this case, Tracy McGonigle’s son was both a natural worker and a preternatural talent. His hometown of Aldan, Pa., is only five miles from Philadelphia International Airport but has a slower, small-town feel. The stories foretelling McGonigle’s talents are numerous. There was the time, around 2 years old, he picked up a bat and swung it like he knew exactly what he was doing.
There were all the days Kevin George would keep tiny foam balls, the kind made to be shot out of Nerf guns, and toss them to a pre-school-aged McGonigle while the Phillies played on TV.
Tracy still has a home video of her son, age 4, following her brother around. She says he would constantly tail people, bat in hand.
“You pitch to me?” he would say. “You pitch to me?”
“He lived and breathed (baseball),” Tracy said. “I really think it’s just in him.”
By the time McGonigle started school, Tracy realized everything clicked better when framed through a baseball lens. She taught him colors and words through little tricks.
What rhymes with … Phillie?
The family often went to games at Citizens Bank Park. McGonigle was born in 2004, so some of his earliest memories involve those star-studded Phillies teams. Cole Hamels. Roy Halladay. He once lit up when Ryan Howard signed his baseball.
No player captured his heart quite like the Phillies second baseman best known for an understated vibe, dirtied uniforms and supreme feel for the game.
“You might have heard this,” Tigers legend Alan Trammell said last year, “but his idol was Chase Utley, and I see that Chase Utley was an elite baseball player, as well. The intangibles, not just the talent. Whether or not that’s where he learned or whether that motivates him, he’s got it.”
By the time McGonigle was in high school, he was committed to Auburn, but scouts kept calling and visiting. A local TV station did a story and even had Utley record a shoutout. Tracy always had a feeling, but this is around the time she realized her son’s baseball future could be more than just another dream. The family didn’t know many people who could relate or answer their questions.
What do you say to the scouts?
Should I put out cookies?
As the attention picked up, Tracy told her son: “Kevin, it has to happen to somebody. Why not you?”
- Kevin Patrick McGonigle and Kevin George McGonigle (Courtesy: Kevin George McGonigle)
Good as he was at Monsignor Bonner High, McGonigle was not a sure-fire top pick. He struck out only two times his senior year — after the draft, he broke down what happened both times in detail — but no one was sure how much power he would produce. For all his baseball instincts, not everyone believed he would remain at shortstop.
He was borderline. Maybe he’d go in the first round. Maybe a bit later. If he slipped too far, he could always go to Auburn.
All that was on the table on draft night, when the family gathered at Tracy’s sister’s house.
“Oh my gosh,” Tracy said. “The best and worst night of my life.”
Tracy and her son sat upstairs. McGonigle said he wanted to focus on the draft, away from the noise. Dad ventured up to check in from time to time. The picks started coming off the board.
The Detroit Tigers surprised many when they selected prep outfielder Max Clark at No. 3, giving him an underslot deal rather than draft touted Florida outfielder Wyatt Langford.
The picks kept coming, but the phone was not ringing. Tracy started to worry. She wanted to call McGonigle’s agent. Her son told her: It’s fine. He’s going to call. She marveled at his 18-year-old poise.
Finally, several picks before the Tigers were set to make their selection at No. 37, the call came.
The Tigers’ decision, both drafting Clark and paying McGonigle an overslot $2,847,500, was a bold gambit for a franchise just returning to relevance.
It’s now a choice the Tigers think will help propel them into the future.
Clark is also ranked as a top-10 prospect. McGonigle has breezed through every level, hitting for power and holding his own in the field. All he did last season was hit .372 at High-A West Michigan, then post a .919 OPS in Double-A Erie, then win MVP of the Arizona Fall League.
Last year, at the Spring Breakout Game, the question was posed to Ryan Garko, the Tigers’ assistant general manager who heads player development: “You knew he was good. Did you know he was this good?”
“What amazes the former player in me,” Garko said, “is our coaches say when you talk to him about, ‘What were you thinking in that at-bat?’ or ‘What was your approach going into this at-bat?” it’s really advanced … Those are things you don’t really know until you spent time with a player and have him in the dugout.”
On a sun-soaked field at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, Kevin Patrick McGonigle stood in the left-handed batter’s box. On the mound, Yankees prospect Carlos Lagrange fired fastballs at triple-digit velocities.
McGonigle faced Lagrange last season in the minors. Even before this spring training game, he stayed up studying.
“I just went back and looked at the film from last year when I faced him, and he threw me a lot of offspeed,” McGonigle said. “I knew he would try to go with a heater and beat me.”
Back home, Kevin George was locked into the game. He even had a few buddies over to watch, like it was the World Series.
Tracy was at a bridal shower with the game pulled up on her phone, hands shaking from the nerves.
McGonigle appeared in a few big-league spring training games last year, but the vibe is different this time. Everyone knows he’s knocking hard on the door of the major leagues. A longtime reporter started a question this spring with a strong assertion that McGonigle is better at this age than Trammell and Lou Whitaker, both Tigers greats.
Back in Aldan, people are stopping Tracy at the grocery store, telling her they’re so happy for her son.
“I really am impressed,” she said, “with how he’s handled all of it.”
On one of the first days in camp, McGonigle stood in front of his locker and answered all the requisite questions.
He said just enough to make his goals clear.
“I know the Tigers have a plan for all the guys in their minor-league system,” he said. “I’m going to do whatever I can to maybe force their hand and put me out there. But if that’s not the case this year, I’ll be right where my feet are, and it won’t affect me at all. “
At only 21, McGonigle comes off as collected and even-keeled. Before he left for spring training, Tracy shared a nice compliment she read in an article. Kevin does his best to block out all that noise.
“Mom, I know you like reading that stuff,” he said. “I don’t need to know it.”
He has gotten more comfortable over the past two years, even as his budding fame has grown. Tracy watched last year as he signed for children at Double-A Erie the way Howard once signed for him.
Big-league spring training, though, has still been an adjustment. He is wearing No. 85 this spring, the type of number they give to youngsters and players who have no chance of making the roster.
“When I first got here, it felt like I was a little nervous to go up to some of the guys,” he said.
Clark, his flashier friend, has tried and failed to get him into jewelry.
“I’m like, ‘Yo, dude, nah, I can’t be spending my money on that,’” McGonigle joked.
On the second day of full-squad workouts, Tigers manager A.J. Hinch had McGonigle stand in front of the room, a sort of rookie introduction. Someone asked McGonigle if he could sing. He immediately said no.
The introduction helped ease the nerves. Recently, he went golfing with big-league players Spencer Torkelson and Riley Greene. He’s watched every step Javier Báez makes while the two take grounders together at shortstop. He reveled in playing on the same field as Aaron Judge.
In that at-bat against Lagrange, McGonigle took a first-pitch slider for a ball. Then he was late and fouled off a 99.7 mph inside fastball.
The 1-1 pitch was a fastball that hit 100.5 mph on the radar gun. McGonigle stayed locked and drove the outer-third pitch 104.5 mph into left field for an opposite-field single. It was not a home run or some massive highlight. It was exactly the type of swing that makes McGonigle so good.
“He’s a very balanced person,” Hinch said. “He’s uniquely qualified to be comfortable in his own shoes.”
Whether McGonigle will make the Opening Day roster remains an open question. Reminder: He has not yet played a single game in Triple A. He has only 46 games above High A to his name.
Gifted as he is, he is still learning. First and foremost, he’s still trying to prove he’s a shortstop in the big leagues. In the Arizona Fall League, he worked with Tigers coach Joey Cora, known as a stickler for the details. It reminded him of another experience.
“He’s very intense,” McGonigle said. “My dad was always intense with me when it came to hitting and taking groundballs. He’s definitely here to make me better.”
McGonigle is close with his mother and keeps in contact with his father daily. Before games, the messages are usually simple.
After games, there’s often feedback, good and bad.
“I break his stones. I break his balls,” Kevin George said. “That’s what dads do.”
These days, knowing how close his son is, realizing all that’s ahead, even a guy like Kevin George can get a little emotional. The reality has hit him harder this spring than ever.
All those sessions in the cage, all those mornings out in the yard, led his son here, to the cusp of the major leagues.
“I just recently warmed up to that,” Kevin George said, “and started feeling, ‘Oh s—, this can really happen.’”