When the Tigers signed the Cuban outfielder Roberto Campos back in 2019, he was the most expensive international free agent the club had ever inked to a deal. Early on he showed the good power potential and solid hitting ability that was projected on signing day, but his progress has been slow since breaking into A-ball back in 2022 at age 19. Campos made the leap to the Double-A last year, and he really took his lumps for much of the summer before coming on late in the year. The fact that Campos didn’t develop into a high end prospect has been a disappointment for the Tigers, but the now 22-year-old right-handed hitting outfielder still has some potential if he can take the next step in 2026.
Campos has turned himself into a solid outfielder, but his speed has dipped to average levels as he’s filled out. He’s balanced that out by maturing in his jumps and routes over the past two seasons. Though still splitting time between center and right field, the latter looks like his long-term defensive home. He doesn’t exactly have a cannon out there, but it’s above average arm strength and his throwing accuracy has improved considerably.
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As you’d expect, the issue is his bat. Campos has a pretty good eye for the zone, and generally swings at the right pitches. He takes his walks and has the ability to line pitches the other way, but that’s partly the result of one of the root causes of his contact issues. Not only is his swing fairly grooved, but his relatively flat path and inside out mechanics are really built to drive the ball to right center field on a line and on the ground. He’s worked on making adjustments and finding more pitches to pull, but he still struggles to be on time to create good angles on pitches down and in that he should crush. He doesn’t pop the ball up much, but most of his fly balls tend to be 350 footers to center and right center field, where it’s hard to cash in and do damage.
He didn’t actually strike out much more in 2025 despite the big jump in competition, but the quality of contact dipped during the middle of the season until he finally started to turn things around late in the year. Most of his hard hit balls were on a line or on the ground, and this has been his pattern for several years, but in 2025 at High-A he had started to make good progress in driving more balls in the air, particularly to the pull field. Better velocity and breaking stuff at the Double-A level set him back to a more defensive approach. Waiting pitchers out worked for him in West Michigan, but against better pitchers much more willing and able to attack the zone, he often got behind in counts and was trying to dig his way out of holes most of the summer.
Campos has made some minor adjustments in his pre-pitch setup, keeping his hands quieter and actively trying to get his front foot down earlier. He’s also worked to build more batspeed. This hasn’t paid enough dividends yet, and Campos still isn’t on time enough to catch many balls out front and crank them to left center and left field. After a really brutal stretch in June and July last summer, the work to adapt started to pay off, and he got back to driving the ball up the gaps. Still, without tapping into his power a lot more effectively he’s not going to get much farther. His production in August and September improved signficantly, those signs that he was settling in encouraged us not to drop him too drastically. A down year after a minor breakout the year prior isn’t unusual, but things need to break the right way for Campos pretty quickly.
He has enough chops to be a solid outfielder who hits left-handed pitching well, and that pathway to at least a bench role is still ahead of him. But while we’ve seen players like Parker Meadows and Wenceel Pérez, and more recently Izaac Pacheco, struggle repeatedly in A-ball before finally benefiting from batspeed training and trying to get shorter to the ball without sacrificing power, Campos has yet to see those dividends. He’s approaching the age where if it doesn’t start to show up soon, it just never will. Few will be betting on a major turnaround in his fortunes at this point.
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For now, the saving grace for Campos is that he’s still a little young for the upper minors. There have never been any questions about his makeup, and his coaches have routinely praised him for being a team leader and setting an example in terms of work ethic as well. Hopefully that ultimately pays off. International free agents get rushed to a degree college players and even prep picks do not, and it’s worth remembering the added demands on them as they’re hurried stateside and exposed to the Rule 5 draft at much earlier ages, all while adapting to living in the States. We’ve been writing about Campos for so long it’s easy to forget he’s only 22 years old, the age of a 2025 college pick. It’s reasonable to give him another year, but a lot is going to have to go right.
Campos did get essentially late second round money, and it’s not looking like a great investment at this point. 2019 was a long time ago in terms of how the Tigers operate, and who operates them, but unfortunately the long dry spell in the international free agent market won’t be broken by Roberto Campos. Realistically, his upside now is a platoon outfield role. It would do wonders for the Tigers ability to compete long-term, at least in the AL Central, if they could finally find a really good player out of their international classes. Willy Adames and Eugenio Suarez were 15 years ago. With new leadership on the international side as longtime director Tom Moore moves to an advisory role, the Tigers really need to do better in this aspect of player acquisition.
Campos will need a big season at Erie to get him to Triple-A Toledo this summer, but that has to be the goal. If he doesn’t unlock something in the power department this year, there’s just too much swing and miss to project him developing into a part-time major league player. After a modest breakout in 2024, hopes were rekindled for Campos last year. Instead, he struggled to adapt to Double-A pitching and really needs a big season to keep hope alive beyond 2026.
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