DETROIT – Spencer Torkelson saved the Detroit Tigers from an embarrassing loss on Monday night with the longest home run of his career, but he won’t really be back on track until he can fix one very specific problem.
The 2024 season has been a letdown for Torkelson so far. The former No. 1 overall draft pick hit 31 home runs and 34 doubles last year while posting a .758 OPS across 159 games.
But through the first 31 games of 2023, he was hitting .205 with 31 strikeouts and a .553 OPS. He was without a home run and his batted ball metrics looked dreadful.
Since May 5, Torkelson has started to feel more like himself. He’s on an eight-game hitting streak that includes four doubles and two homers. His OPS over that stretch is 1.030.
Torkelson broke his home run drought on Sunday night in a blowout loss to the Astros, and his 446-foot blast on Monday turned a one-run deficit into a one-run lead and saved the Tigers from a loss to the league-worst Marlins.
So now that Torkelson is hitting bombs again, does it mean he’s back?
I would pump the brakes.
The home run Torkelson hit on Sunday night came on a 78 mph sweeper that sat right in the middle of the plate. Monday night’s bomb came on an 85 mph slider in basically the same spot.
When Torkelson was at his best last season, he was mashing fastballs.
In 2023, Torkelson posted an expected batting average of .277, an expected slugging percentage of .570, and an expected xwOBA (expected weighted on-base percentage -- basically, OBP that rewards extra-base hits) of .404 against four-seam fastballs.
Expected stats (xBA, xSLG, xwOBA) are calculated based on a player’s quality of contact and launch angle. Those numbers for Torkelson were supported by a 59.4% hard-hit rate against four-seamers.
This season, the numbers couldn’t be more different.
Torkelson has an xBA of .152 against four-seam fastballs. His xSLG is .281, and his xwOBA is .241. The hard-hit rate has dropped to 34.4%.
It’s not just four-seamers, either. Torkelson has been much worse against cutters (.349 xBA, .606 xSLG, .444 xwOBA, 48.1% hard-hit rate in 2023 vs. .128, .248, .200, and 36.4% this year).
Torkelson hasn’t been swinging and missing at more fastballs -- his contact is just significantly worse. His average exit velocity against all fastballs is down from 94.6 mph to 91.8 mph, and the launch angle is up from 18 to 21 degrees.
During his first two seasons against MLB pitching, about one-quarter of Torkelson’s balls in play registered as line drives. This year, that number has plummeted to 15.8%.
About half of those line drives have been replaced by grounders, which is obviously a problem for a power hitter. But what’s even worse is that the other half turned into popups, which are just as bad as strikeouts in terms of production.
Torkelson is getting under the ball almost 40% of the time. That would be great for his home run numbers if these fly balls were barreled. But his barrel rate is down from 14.1% to 3.5%, which means he’s hitting harmless fly balls, not blasts.
It’s great to see Torkelson hit a couple of balls over the fence, but both of those pitches were meatballs. We really need to see him turn on a fastball and drive it out of the park.
The Tigers are counting on Torkelson to be the primary power threat in the heart of their lineup, and to do that, he needs to punish fastballs.
Last season, Torkelson racked up 21 doubles, 17 homers, and a .270 batting average against heaters. His current .190 batting average and zero homers against 373 heaters isn’t going to cut it.
Torkelson is currently batting .300 with a .500 slugging percentage and two homers against breaking balls, so he’s about to get a heavy dose of fastballs in the coming weeks.
If the Tigers are going to break out of their long offensive funk, he’s going to need to find his timing against the most common pitch.