Henning: Tigers still trouble-shooting Wilmer Flores’ tangled 2023

Detroit News
Lynn Henning |  Special to The Detroit News

Just what alien forces overtook Wilmer Flores in 2023 have yet to be determined, despite an interstellar investigation by the Tigers.

A right-handed pitcher who looked at the year’s start as if he was rocket-riding his way to Detroit often has been a mystifying mess in nine starts this spring at Double-A Erie.

Flores, 22, a right-handed thrower who is 6-foot-4, 225 pounds, has started nine times for the SeaWolves. His numbers are decidedly wobbly: 4.95 ERA, 1.46 WHIP, 36.1 innings, 38 hits, 15 walks, 27 strikeouts.

The digits stand in grisly contrast to his dazzling 2022 work that made him, heading into 2023, the highest-ranked pitching prospect on the Tigers’ farm.

Flores a year ago pitched in 25 games combined at Erie and Single-A West Michigan, 24 of them starts (19 at Erie). He had a 3.57 ERA, a 1.01 WHIP. He put together 103.1 innings, allowing but 81 hits, while walking 23 and striking out 130.

Another capsule: Flores’ hits-per-nine-innings ratio a year ago was 7.1, versus his 2023 mark of 9.4 He struck out an average of 11.3 batters per nine in 2022 and walked 2.0 hitters. This year, the ratios are 6.7 whiffs and 3.7 walks per game.

Stunning, the fall-off. More stunning is how a man who last year threw blowtorches at hitters has slipped in power. Flores, in 2022, was consistently 94-to-96 with his fastball, hitting 97 and even 98.

This year, he’s 92-93.

The Tigers are of general belief Flores’ issues are temporary, and of a mechanical nature. The developmental corps, including Tigers pitching coach Chris Fetter, along with Robin Lund and Gabe Ribas, are marshaling scads of science and video in a bid to bring Flores back into alignment.

“I think there have been some delivery changes that happened during the offseason that we’re starting to address,” said Ryan Garko, who is the Tigers’ development supervisor.

Flores trained during the offseason with Treads Athletics in Pineville, N.C. It was more of a strength-and-conditioning stint, Garko said, with Treads and the Tigers in communication.

Whatever and however it happened, Flores came to spring camp a different pitcher. And not in a good way.

There were small things that since have been detected: incremental changes in arm slot, and in arm elevation, with the Tigers’ analytical and coaching crew working to help Flores find his old extension and fluidity.

“He’s working on some stuff,” Erie manager Gabe Alvarez said Sunday, a few hours before Erie’s game against Somerset. “He shows flashes. I think his mechanics are a little different. His arm slot’s maybe a little different.”

Garko says Flores’ last start, Wednesday against Somerset, a Yankees affiliate with lots of bats, was another sign Flores is inching his way toward 2022 status.

Flores threw five innings and 59 pitches (39 strikes). Somerset got a run and four hits against him, along with one walk. Flores, however, who was a strikeout sultan in 2022, whiffed but one batter Wednesday.

This season’s mystery follows an amazing tale woven in 2022 when a man who was undrafted, a Venezuela native who signed with the Tigers as a free agent after a junior-college cameo in America, became one of the most furious tossers of a baseball anywhere in the Tigers’ chain.

Garko says everything else in the anatomy of Flores’ 2023 season checks out: Flores’ “communication effort has been good” and a pitcher’s sweat equity has been exemplary.

“He’s pitching much, much better,” Garko said. “Against that really good Yankees (Somerset) lineup, he was throwing good off-speed pitches and his fastball quality and fastball velocity, I think, were getting back to where we saw it last year.”

If so, the Tigers will cease worrying and begin relishing again those Flores power-pitching acts from 2022.

The season’s young. So is a right-handed pitcher who, only months ago, looked as if he might blaze, meteor-like, all the way to Detroit.

For now, Detroit will remain in the distance. Getting back to his old Double-A ways will be good enough for his Tigers bosses — and, probably, for Flores.

Lynn Henning is a freelance writer and retired Detroit News sports reporter.

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