Spencer Torkelson Should Pull More Fly Balls
Tork debuted in a changing league; he has an obvious counter-punch to bounce back in 2023
The story of Spencer Torkelson’s rookie year is about him as a hitter, of course.
The 2020 No. 1 overall pick cracked Detroit’s Opening Day roster in 2022, following a brief minor league career where he hit .267/.383/.552 with 30 homers, all in 2021. Tork rose from High-A to Triple-A that season, hitting at well above-average clips along each stop.
Then came the big league struggles last year. Through the middle of July he had hit just 5 homers with a .098 ISO, good for a not-nice 69 wRC+.
His debut season is also a story of the macro-level changes to Major League Baseball.
As you may recall, MLB introduced a “deadened” ball in 2022, one that was partially mixed in throughout 2021. Aaron Judge and the Yankees might’ve gotten the bouncy balls in ‘22, but MLB’s ridiculousness aside, the ball absolutely played differently overall this past summer:
So what? Shouldn’t this have affected all hitters the same, if the ball just wasn’t flying as much? Yes and no. Many hitters were on record throughout the year about batted balls that were squared up a certain way, which would’ve been homers in the past, but just weren’t carrying the same.
Homers were down overall, as evidenced by the league’s HR/FB rate:
2022’s league-wide HR/FB% was the equivalent of the 2015 campaign, and was much more in line with 2012 and 2013 than the 2016-21 “Juiced Ball Era.”
Yet it was a certain kind of homer that was particularly affected this past season — oppo homers. Here’s another look at the league as a whole:
In 2022, homers on pulled fly balls were down 15.8% from 2019, the height of the Juiced Ball Era. As evidenced above, however, home runs on opposite field fly balls were down 45%! This is why we saw an explosion of 20-homer bats in ‘19. Batted ball events that were typically fly outs, especially ones to the opposite field, were leaving the yard at an all-time rate. Additional “types” of hitters (ones who use the whole field, not just power bats) were able to, well, hit for power!
With the new, deadened 2022 ball, pulled flies were affected, but not as drastically as ones that were hit the other way.
Let’s bring it back to Torkelson, who pulled just 19.6% of his fly balls last year, which ranked 147th out of 190 hitters with at least 100 fly ball events. He went the other way on nearly half of his fly balls (48.6%).
Intuitively, this isn’t a bad thing. Many of us are taught growing up to use the entire field, go where the ball takes you, etc. That Tork isn’t some one trick, pull-heavy masher is a testament to him as a hitter. He’s more than that, but based on his 2022 results he isn’t ready to use that approach at the big league level.
Furthermore, consider the ballpark he plays in — Comerica — and look at how brutal it is to try and go yard to the right-center park of the outfield. Nick Castellanos, a former Tiger who had a similar approach, didn’t truly break out until leaving Detroit.
Over the past 3 seasons, Comerica ranks 27th in wOBAcon (basically, offensive production on contact) according to Baseball Savant. It isn’t the best place to hit, period, let alone for a rookie hitter with a “whole fields” approach and a deadened ball.
Moving Forward
Tork was optioned to the minors in mid-July. He didn’t tear it up at Triple-A, but returned to the Tigers in September and did show some very small signs of improvement, registering a .167 ISO while pulling the ball more overall.
After the season, he admitted to getting overloaded with video and data, and that he ultimately pressed too hard in search of a solution. This makes sense - he was a rookie hitter with one year of minor league experience thrown into a changing league-wide batted ball environment.
The biggest hope I have for Tork to make a meaningful adjustment comes from the changes to his surrounding environments. The new President of Baseball Ops is in Detroit, Scott Harris, comes from San Francisco and brings with him a new hitting philosophy, headlined by rising hitting coach star Michael Brdar.
Over the past three seasons the Giants rank 1st, 17th, and 6th in pulled fly balls. The Tigers rank 30th, 28th, and 25th.
Before anything else can change, Tork needs to implement this new approach. It was always going to be too hard in-season, especially once the struggles began, but part of what made him such an exciting prospect was that he wasn’t just a slugger. He had a legit hit tool coming up. He used the whole field. Now it’s time to take that baseball IQ and make an adjustment.
Austin Riley is a good example of how a young hitter can evolve over multiple seasons. It can’t always happen all at once. In 2019 Riley was a slugger who struck out too much. In 2020 he adjusted to hit for more average. In 2021 and ‘22 he married those concepts to become a complete hitter. Tork doesn’t need to abandon an all-fields approach for the rest of his career; he can always come back to it when the time is right.
We want changes from Torkelson in 2023, though. Based on where the league is at right now, and the coaches being brought in to Detroit, pulling more of his fly balls would be an excellent starting point.