Spencer Torkelson

[Tiger337]

Bob Horner would be a decent outcome for Torkelson.  I'll take a 127 career OPS.  Sluggers are usually streaky, but all their production counts the same in the end.  

[CMU97]

You know all this talk about Spencer reminds me of another 1st round draft pick by the Tigers who was much heralded as the greatest thing since sliced bread coming out of college. He too made his debut at age 22, and struggled mightily his first 3 years in the majors. More so than Spencer, and it can be argued he was a worse defender than Tork. That player went on to a 17-year career, 2 WS championships, and an MVP award. That of course was Kirk Gibson.

I think everyone one of us would be thrilled if Spencer had that career. Or even the career of Bob Horner. Point is that not everyone, and maybe only a couple of people a generation come up and play like gangbusters and keep it up for their entire career.  He is still figuring things out, and there will good and bad days. Way too early to write him off.

[oblong]

5 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

I tend to think there is a good hitter living inside Torkelson's skin but he has to get his head on straight with regard to his approach, and I really think the Tigers need to stop giving him too much to think about. Much like at the beginning of last season, Torkelson is in between too much, which is usually a symptom of thinking too much. Stop setting him up to be trying to outguess the pitcher, and just let him look for the ball. I have to say I am with Monroe on this. He says he hated pitcher scouting reports because it didn't matter if the guy did 'X' 90% of the time in 'Y' situation because he might just as easily know you know that and cross you up. IOW as long as pitch tendency data isn't absolute, it's value it pretty low in the real world. I would think any pitcher worth his salt, knowing that the tigers love to do deep tendency analytics, would absolutely come out and pitch against his tendencies, and I think we have seen a good number of games where that looked like it was happening.

Lou was like that. He’d be asked “what pitch was that?”  He’d say “I don’t know. I just see it and hit it”

[kdog]

7 hours ago, KL2 said:

we know its your favorite thing to juts arbitrarily take and remove stats to prove your point, but those months count. he was also 23 with basically no lineup protection. 

The months count and he ended up with a .758 OPS. He had a horrible March April, Good May, Mid June/July, and killed it in August/September. 

Why are we repeating March/April of 2023? We have no choice but to patient. They need him to be good.

[kdog]

7 hours ago, mtutiger said:

I hear that, but at the same time, Greene, Meadows and Rogers tools don't mean a hill of beans when the offense, collectively and systemically, are not performing.

That's where we are at right now... the Tigers performance at the plate isn't just a Spencer Torkelson problem, it's a systemic problem.

Those guys have skills beyond hitting. I would take Greene off the list. He's been fine imo. Rogers and Meadows are currently a problem. 

[mtutiger]

10 hours ago, kdog said:

Those guys have skills beyond hitting. 

I understand that skills raise the bar on Torkelson, but even relative to each players' skills, Rogers and Meadows have been as bad or worse this season IMO. 

Edited April 10 by mtutiger

[mtutiger]

13 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

Bob Horner would be a decent outcome for Torkelson.  I'll take a 127 career OPS.  Sluggers are usually streaky, but all their production counts the same in the end.  

 

11 hours ago, CMU97 said:

You know all this talk about Spencer reminds me of another 1st round draft pick by the Tigers who was much heralded as the greatest thing since sliced bread coming out of college. He too made his debut at age 22, and struggled mightily his first 3 years in the majors. More so than Spencer, and it can be argued he was a worse defender than Tork. That player went on to a 17-year career, 2 WS championships, and an MVP award. That of course was Kirk Gibson.

I think everyone one of us would be thrilled if Spencer had that career. Or even the career of Bob Horner. Point is that not everyone, and maybe only a couple of people a generation come up and play like gangbusters and keep it up for their entire career.  He is still figuring things out, and there will good and bad days. Way too early to write him off.

The 1/1 status looms large in how people look at Torkelson... it basically makes people look at him and think that if he doesn't end up being the next coming of Paul Goldschmidt, he's a complete failure. Or at least that is how I perceive it.

Of course, as Rob has mentioned, how he performs relative to others in his draft class matters in that context (jury is still out there), but it's a distinction that matters to people.

The Horner comparison kinda illustrates it well tho... OP uses the Horner comparison as a negative, others see it as a decent outcome. It may just come down to how people manage their expectations and how much one gets hung up on status or the precise slot a player is drafted in.

Edited April 10 by mtutiger

[oblong]

A former member of this site, who left on good terms, used to say that Tony Clark was the benchmark for a good draft class.  Not a draft pick, but a draft class for a team.  If, after all of your picks, you can end up with a Tony Clark, it was a good deal.  Anyone better and it was a great draft, anything less, it was a bad draft.  The point isn't to say Tony Clark was great, but that the draft is most likely not going to produce a HOF or superstar.

 

[gehringer_2]

43 minutes ago, oblong said:

A former member of this site, who left on good terms, used to say that Tony Clark was the benchmark for a good draft class.  Not a draft pick, but a draft class for a team.  If, after all of your picks, you can end up with a Tony Clark, it was a good deal.  Anyone better and it was a great draft, anything less, it was a bad draft.  The point isn't to say Tony Clark was great, but that the draft is most likely not going to produce a HOF or superstar.

 

All things being equal, I think that is a little too low a bar. You have a 26 man roster and players who stick will average maybe a 10 yr career, so the benchmark to keep turning over your roster is more like 2 - 2.5 players every year. If you want to be generous one of those could come from an international signing, and of course the Tigers have not done well there at all, which only exacerbated their lack of draft success in prior regimes. So I would say the benchmark should be a bench player, a starter, and an international on average per year. If you are below that you are probably losing ground.

Now of course, all things are not equal, and if you are a team that would rather trade older high priced talent than keep it, then you can make a big dent in your draft needs.

[Sports_Freak]

It's too bad spring training stats are so meaningless. Many saw him struggling in Florida and just shrugged it off. And here we are....

[chasfh]

So I'm reading this thread and I'm seeing a fear that TORK! might end up being like Rob Deer: super low batting average, quite a few homers, a ****-ton of strikeouts, along with a hope that he won't be so bad and he'll end up like guys who had similar profiles but still decent careers. So I look up his numbers and I see eight strikeouts in 49 trips, and I'm thinking, huh. That doesn't seem so high.

I look at his SO% and BB% specifically, and they are coming in at 16.3% and 6.1%, respectively. Those are both lower than MLB overall, but also lower than his last season's numbers. And I'm like, huh.

So I go to his Savant card, and I see that he is swinging less on first pitch but swinging more overall; making more contact in the zone but less outside it; his overall chase rate is up, but he's letting more middle-middle pitches go by him unswung at.

But most concerning, I think, is that both his exit velo and max velo are way down; his hard hit rate is also way down after being among the best in baseball last year; he has zero barrels in his first 49 plate appearances (he should have four or so instead); and his XSLG, based on quality of contact, is half what it was last year and is among the lowest in baseball overall.

Add that all up, and it looks to me as though there's an attempt to remake his overall plate approach to be more selective and to concentrate on putting his bat on the ball when he does swing, versus letting 'er rip. That might not be the worst thing for him, specifically, since he probably has the kind of power where he can jack a ton of bombs without putting everything he has into his swing. If he eases up and concentrates on meeting the ball better, he can cut his Ks down and raise his batting average while hitting just as many homers off the increased number of balls he puts into play. That may be the hope, anyway. But so far, the results are less than whelming.

Granted, this is a small sample size and he could have gotten these same results in less than 50 plate trips without trying to change a thing. But given all the differences in these various metrics and how they relate to one another, it looks to me as though there's a conscious effort to re-do his approach, and these are the results so far.

I don't know what this means for his future, but I think this is worth keeping an eye on to see whether he continues along this path, which I would assume given it's so early in the season, and whether/when they abandon it and let him go back to what brung him to the Show in the first place.

Edited April 10 by chasfh

[kdog]

Avila likely rushed him to the majors in 2022..That's his fault and a feckless owner who put him in charge of a rebuild. But we do have to reach a certain baseline for him to be considered a core piece.

[kdog]

51 minutes ago, Sports_Freak said:

It's too bad spring training stats are so meaningless. Many saw him struggling in Florida and just shrugged it off. And here we are....

Meadows hit well in ST...goes both ways.

[chasfh]

So, this is interesting: take a look at his Savant this year versus last year. He's basically Bizarro TORK! so far.

[casimir]

59 minutes ago, Sports_Freak said:

It's too bad spring training stats are so meaningless. Many saw him struggling in Florida and just shrugged it off. And here we are....

Except he didn't struggle.

[Sports_Freak]

4 minutes ago, casimir said:

Except he didn't struggle.

Whis stats are those? Usually the Free Press is pretty accurate. And I thought I remember hearing he was struggling at the time. 

[chasfh]

2 minutes ago, Sports_Freak said:

Usually the Free Press is pretty accurate.

I'm not sure I have ever heard these six words strung together in this exact order before.

 

 

😉

[Sports_Freak]

10 minutes ago, casimir said:

Except he didn't struggle.

[Sports_Freak]

Just now, chasfh said:

I'm not sure I have ever heard these six words strung together in this exact order before.

 

 

😉

https://freep-mi.newsmemory.com/?token=d39964a84c078362302fb0941bd189f4&cnum=473e094e-6e1e-4e77-8fa3-a1c9e8511023&fod=1111111STD-0&selDate=20240410&licenseType=paid_subscriber&

[SoCalTiger]

The bigger picture is can the Tigers current staff develop hitters like they seem to have proven to do with pitchers ? Not to beat a dead horse, which I am doing, but Hinch had Issac Parades under his nose and never saw that he was one of the TOP power hitters in the game, 23rd in the game OPS in 2023 , as he is now for Tampa. Barely played the guy. He would really really help this team. So is Hinch and his "work the count" actually hindering development ? Others on this board have mentioned this that know far more than me. So is it TORK or is it coaching ? 

[LongLiveMaroth]

36 minutes ago, chasfh said:

So, this is interesting: take a look at his Savant this year versus last year. He's basically Bizarro TORK! so far.

Look at the fielding; All Glove 1B Tork

[kdog]

13 minutes ago, SoCalTiger said:

The bigger picture is can the Tigers current staff develop hitters like they seem to have proven to do with pitchers ? Not to beat a dead horse, which I am doing, but Hinch had Issac Parades under his nose and never saw that he was one of the TOP power hitters in the game, 23rd in the game OPS in 2023 , as he is now for Tampa. Barely played the guy. He would really really help this team. So is Hinch and his "work the count" actually hindering development ? Others on this board have mentioned this that know far more than me. So is it TORK or is it coaching ? 

Tork should be more ready made given his career path(3 years in college). We should have basic competency with questions about his upside. But maybe they rushed him, his development was screwed up? I'm not sure. Hopefully he can get it going.

[mtutiger]

15 minutes ago, kdog said:

Tork should be more ready made given his career path(3 years in college). 

Just to play Devils Advocate for a second, is 3 years in college better positioning than a player being drafted out of high school as an 18 year old or being signed internationally at 17 (as Paredes was)? In the latter case, that's upwards of 3 to 4 years of additional time under supervision of major league coaching versus a player being drafted at 20/21.

College is a career path that a lot of players perhaps need to make the leap, but I don't know that it's a huge advantage either.

[Sports_Freak]

Just now, mtutiger said:

Just to play Devils Advocate for a second, is 3 years in college better positioning than a player being drafted out of high school as an 18 year old or being signed internationally at 17 (as Paredes was)? In the latter case, that's upwards of 3 to 4 years of additional time under supervision of major league coaching versus a player being drafted at 20/21.

College is a career path that a lot of players perhaps need to make the leap, but I don't know that it's a huge advantage either.

Some people say that playing in college is a bit like minor league training. Aluminum bats screw up many scouts judgement, IMO.

[gehringer_2]

15 minutes ago, Sports_Freak said:

Some people say that playing in college is a bit like minor league training. Aluminum bats screw up many scouts judgement, IMO.

Didn't the NCAA deaden the bats a few years ago to cut down on the effective difference?

In any case, Torks power is real enough, if fact if he'd trust himself he has plenty of power to the opposite field. He'd hit his HRs without selling out to pull the ball. I guess he got to the Tigers too late in Cabrera's career for that idea to rub off on him.