You notice progress, ever so slightly, in each of Jackson Jobe’s successive starts in 2022.
Jobe threw a season-high five innings Friday at Dunedin and got the victory as Single-A Lakeland whipped the Dunedin Blue Jays, 7-1.
In those five innings, a 19-year-old, right-handed starter a year out of high school, allowed four hits and one earned run, while walking two and striking out five.
He threw a few too many pitches — 75, 44 of them strikes — but he was sharper.
“A little more pitching, and less throwing,” said Lakeland manager Andrew Graham, speaking of the gent who last July was a third overall pick in the 2021 MLB Draft.
It was a matter Friday of sticking to the “approach,” Graham said, and here he gave special praise to Flying Tigers catcher Eduardo Valencia for staying on script with his pitch-calls.
“His (Jobe’s) slider was average to above-average, and he’s always got that in his back pocket,” Graham said of Jobe’s trademark pitch. “We still need to see him develop his fastball. He was at 64% (usage, Friday night). It was running 95, 96. And he used all the quadrants of the plate.
“The first three innings he was dominating. Got into a little trouble in the fourth (double, fly-out, balk, ground-out, walk, line-out). But he got out of it, and then in the fifth inning he was strong (fly-out, strikeout, hit-by-pitch, weak ground-out).
“He maintained his velocity. And he held the running game better.”
Jobe is being treated gently in his first full year of professional baseball. He tossed only 51 innings a year ago in his senior year at Heritage Hall High in Oklahoma City, and pitched in zero games after signing with Detroit.
The Tigers are treating this year as a kind of break-in season. Jobe has thrown 25.1 innings in nine starts and he will be capped as summer nears and his Tigers 101 class begins to wind down. He has an ERA of 3.91 and a 1.38 WHIP. His strikeouts and walks ratios for nine innings are 10.3 and 4.6. He has been nipped in those 25.1 innings for 22 hits.
Heading soon to West Michigan?
It’s only a matter of days, or hours, before some of that shining Lakeland bullpen cast begins moving up the Tigers’ minor-league expressway.
Injuries always dictate moves. So does progress. And among those who have all but outgrown low-A life at Lakeland is right-handed reliever Aaron Haase.
Haase is one of those exceptions in professional baseball in that he is a pitcher who is listed, maybe generously, at 5-foot-8. He is a right-handed reliever who last July was the Tigers’ 17th-round pick, out of Wichita State.
His all-telling numbers: 16 games, 24 innings, 15 hits, 10 walks — and 35 strikeouts. His ERA is 1.88, his WHIP 1.04.
“His fastball command isn’t great,” Graham said. “but his cutter and slider are out-pitches at high levels.
“And his curveball, at times — I’d have no trouble throwing that out there at the big leagues.”
Others among Lakeland’s back-end corps are probably not long for Marchant Stadium, including: RJ Petit, the 6-8, 300-pound right-hander who was drafted a year ago (14th round) and who had an earlier stint this spring at West Michigan.
Also, Blake Holub, “another power arm,” said Graham, whose overall numbers (10.36 ERA) don’t necessarily tell the story of a 15th-rounder from 2021 who has 31 punch-outs in 24.1 innings.
Just as he was thriving
Colt Keith is out of West Michigan’s lineup – perhaps for a spell.
Keith, only 20, was batting .301 Thursday night with a gleaming .914 OPS as he reached first base following a single during a game against Lansing at LMCU Ballpark.
He got a lead, then dived back on a pickoff attempt.
Trouble.
Keith jammed his right shoulder and will be gone — for how long, the Tigers aren’t sure.
“It’s definitely an IL (injured list) situation,” said Ryan Garko, who heads the Tigers’ player-development realm. “Once he sees the doctors (at Lakeland, Florida), we’ll have a better idea in timeframe/seriousness.
“We’ll probably know something mid-week. But it definitely will be an IL stint with rehab in Lakeland.”
Keith was the Tigers’ fifth-round pick in 2020 out of Biloxi (Mississippi) High and has been playing third base, and some second base, for Whitecaps manager Brayan Pena. He bats left-handed and to date has been the best young hitter in the 2022 Tigers farm chain.
Sometimes, lower is better
Daniel Cabrera was not enjoying Erie. He had the numbers to prove a Double-A promotion, at the very least, might have been premature for a left-handed batting outfielder: .182 batting average in 37 games, with a .510 OPS for the SeaWolves.
Ouch. Double ouch given that Cabrera two years ago was the third player picked by the Tigers and first player in the 2020 MLB Draft’s second round.
Two weeks ago, Cabrera was returned to Single-A West Michigan for some reneweal and mental restoration.
It has been marvelous tonic. Cabrera came to work Sunday at Comstock Park for a game against Lansing and was flashing these nine-game June digits: .447 batting average, .475 on-base, .658 slugging (1.153 OPS), with five extra-base hits.
He had struck out five times in 38 at-bats.
Cabrera was the 62nd overall pick in 2020 and, along with Spencer Torkelson and Dillon Dingler (first and second picks by the Tigers) was thought, by now, to be a player who might push for time in Detroit.
But that timetable has been amended. The Tigers are opting for a let’s-take-it-from-the-top approach with Cabrera that looks in these early days at West Michigan to have been a proper call.
When to wince at a stat
Gage Workman has been, well, missing in action rather frequently in 2022.
Missing, as in whiffing, at Double-A Erie.
Workman, who was a fourth-round pick by the Tigers in 2020 (Arizona State), plays shortstop and third base for the SeaWolves. Heading into Sunday’s game, Workman had struck out 88 times in 195 at-bats.
That is a strikeout rate of … 45%.
Lynn Henning is a freelance writer and retired Detroit News sports reporter.