This story was excerpted from Jason Beck’s Tigers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris had the headline comments at the team’s annual visit this week to the Detroit Economic Club, but Spencer Torkelson answer when asked about handling the pressure of being a top overall Draft pick trying to make it in the Majors was sneaky insightful.
“A lot of pressure last year. I didn’t handle it very well,” Torkelson said Tuesday in a panel discussion with teammates Jake Rogers and Kerry Carpenter along with Tigers television broadcaster Matt Shepard. “And I just kind of, step by step, created a process which I trusted, which I followed. I knew if I could get these little, short wins and keep stacking those up, the big picture’s gonna pay off. But if I focused on the big picture when I’m right at the beginning of it, way too many expectations, way too much pressure on yourself. So it’s really just stacking the small wins, trusting your process and letting that play out.”
In that context, when Torkelson explained his approach a couple days later on a critical two-run double that provided insurance runs in Thursday’s 8-4 win over the Twins, it makes sense. Not only did the Twins surprisingly pitch to Torkelson with first base open and two outs, with Zack Short on deck, but reliever Jorge López threw a first-pitch fastball over the plate, even though catcher Ryan Jeffers looked like he was setting up off the plate. Torkelson crushed it, sending a 109 mile-per-hour line drive to the fence to left-center field.
“It’s easy to be passive in that situation,” manager A.J. Hinch said, “but he was very aggressive on a good pitch to hit in a big spot where a couple RBIs could come through.”
Said Torkelson: “That’s just my approach. He’s got a good fastball and I was just looking for something out over. It just so happened to be on the first pitch. I would’ve waited it out until the fifth pitch if that’s what it was, but it was the first pitch.”
It was the 10th ball that Torkelson has hit at 109 mph or harder this season. Four of those have come in the last three weeks. Eight of his 20 hardest-hit balls have come in that span.
Through Torkelson’s early struggles, he stayed focused on process over results. Get a good pitch to hit and get off your best swing, and the results should follow. Now, they’re catching up.
Torkelson ended April batting .206 with two home runs and a .575 OPS. After batting .267 in May with nine doubles, two homers, and a .784 OPS, he began June batting 2-for-22 with 10 strikeouts over his first six games. He’s 10-for-28 since then, with three doubles, two homers — one 436 feet, the other 440 — six RBIs and six walks in seven games.
“I think I just attribute it to staying consistent, trusting my process and just going up to the plate every single time with the same mindset and a lot of confidence,” Torkelson said. “I’ve always felt this good. It was just a matter of the hits dropping and getting under some balls.”
Torkelson entered Friday ranked among the top 12 percent of MLB hitters in average exit velocity, and the top 11 percent in hard-hit rate. His barrel rate — batted balls with the right combination of exit velocity and launch angle to do damage — was just outside the top 25 percent of big leaguers. His 66-point difference between actual slugging percentage (.387) and expected slugging percentage (.453) was the 26th-biggest gap in that direction among Major League hitters; Zach McKinstry was 18th. His improvements from last year in batting average and hard-hit rate rank 11th and 15th among MLB hitters.
The metrics have suggested since Spring Training that Torkelson was swinging well enough to get better results over time.
“He’s getting rewarded for having a really good process,” Hinch said.
How that carries forward will be interesting to watch. He has been seeing a lower percentage of fastballs and higher percentage of breaking balls this month than in April or May. Torkelson is trusting in his process to let him focus on and capitalize on the fastballs he does get.
That actually fits with something Harris brought up at the Economic Club luncheon.
“When we talk about hitting behind the scenes, we talk about knowing the pitches that you can drive, knowing the pitches that you can do damage on, swinging at those, getting your ‘A’ swing off as many times as possible on those and shutting it down for the rest,” Harris said.