Will Red-Hot Spring by Tigers' Former Top Prospect Carry Into Regular Season?
One of the best stories of this spring camp for the Detroit Tigers has been the performance of Spencer Torkelson.
The future looked murky for the 2020 No. 1 overall pick, with him losing his job at first base to Colt Keith after the team signed Gleyber Torres to take over at second.
A switch wasn't surprising.
Torkelson couldn't follow up his breakout showing in 2023 this past season, and because of that, he was sent down to Triple-A for an extended time until he was called back up later in the year.
It would have been easy for the slugger to enter spring training distracted or in a bad mood regarding his newfound reality, but the young player addressed it in a mature manner, and he put his head down and went to work.
That could result in an Opening Day roster spot after he's torn it up this spring.
At the time of writing, Torkelson is hitting .302/.362/.581 with four homers and nine RBI across his 17 games played and 43 at-bats, striking out 10 times but also drawing four walks.
With the injuries to Matt Vierling and Parker Meadows to start the year, there should be an opening for the slugger.
What he does with it will determine his standing with the organization.
It's hard to make a proclamation one way or the other when it comes to Torkelson.
The one thing he's been during his time in The Show is consistently inconsistent, and there isn't a lot of rationale to think that will change in 2025 unless he has truly taken a step forward.
But there are reasons to be optimistic outside of the power numbers.
While it's a small sample size this spring, his ground outs per fly outs ratio of 0.67 closely resembles the 0.69 figure he had in the Majors during his breakout 2023 season, suggesting his swing and approach at the plate is closer to his 31-homer campaign than the one he had last year when that ratio number was 0.54.
"Gosh, I feel great. I'm being athletic, putting a good swing on the ball and being really disciplined with my approach. And that's what it takes," Torkelson said earlier in March after he hit two homers in a game.
He knows what he needs to do to stay at this level.
Now, it's all about executing when he's in the batter's box.
