Ok, the Detroit Tigers looked bad for much of today’s rubber match against the Boston Red Sox. Real bad. The kind of bad that you know you shouldn’t take much away from, because we’re only six games into the season, but the vibe is too lousy to ignore. Like no one really wanted to play today. That kind of bad. So after getting shellacked for 6 1⁄2 innings, it was at least good to see some fight after getting embarrassed for much of the contest.
More importantly, it was good to see Spencer Torkelson smoothly crush an Austin Davis fastball into the seats in left for the first home run of his major league career!
Harold Castro led off the bottom of the seventh with a solid single to center field, so he got a good look at the power of Tork. Davis left a 93.7 mph fastball center cut at the top of the zone, and Torkelson mashed it. Instant no-doubter. The two-run blast left the bat at 105.7 mph and flew 396 feet. We’ll see many, many more of these, but while there will be many like it, this home run was the first of a very promising career. Nice to get these firsts out of the way so he can settle in and just do his thing.
Even better for Torkelson, the fan who caught the home run ball didn’t hold out for a king’s ransom. They gave him the souvenir baseball in exchange for a meet and greet and some signed equipment. Pretty nice of them, really.