Spencer Torkelson’s Adjustments Have Paid Off So Far

While the Twins continue to stumble, the Tigers are in first place in the AL Central, having recently won nine out of 11 games. Spencer Torkelson played a big part in that surge, homering four times over that span and five times so far this season, putting him halfway to last year’s total before tax day rolled around. As he’s done on and off throughout his brief career, the top pick of the 2020 draft is raking, but given his ups and downs since reaching the majors in ’22, it will take more than a few strong weeks to convince anyone he’s truly turned a corner. Still, the adjustments he’s made suggest this is more than just a random hot streak.

Through 156 games, the 25-year-old Torkelson is hitting an impressive .288/.380/.627. His slugging percentage ranks sixth in the American League, while his 184 wRC+ ranks eighth; he was second behind only Aaron Judge in both categories until Monday’s 0-for-4 against the Brewers. Admittedly, he hasn’t exactly been beating up on Cy Young Award hopefuls, as his homers have come at the expense of the Dodgers’ Alex Vesia, the White Sox’s Davis Martin, the Yankees’ Carlos Carrasco, and the Twins’ Kody Funderburk and Simeon Woods Richardson. But Tork and his teammates are part of the reason that list looks inauspicious, as the Tigers — who are 10-6 thus far, their best start since 2015 — have beaten up opposing pitchers, scoring 5.0 runs per game (tied for second in the AL) with a 116 wRC+ (third).

Torkelson’s rookie campaign was more or less a disaster (.203/.285/.319, 76 wRC+, -0.8 WAR), but he’s put together some torrid stretches since then. Here’s a look at his rolling 16-game wOBAs throughout his career:

By this methodology, Torkelson is hotter than he was at the start of last September, if not quite as hot as he was in late August of 2023, but he’s off to a much better start than in either of those two seasons. The 2023 campaign is the only one in which he spent the entire year in the majors; he hit .233/.313/.446 with 31 homers, a 108 wRC+, and 1.5 WAR. If not a tremendously impressive performance in its own right, that at least represented a massive step forward from 2022.

As we’re so often reminded, progress in baseball is not necessarily linear. Torkelson stumbled out of the gate last year, hitting for a 71 wRC+ in April and raising that only to 78 in May. On June 3, the Tigers optioned him to Triple-A Toledo; at the time, he was hitting just .201/.266/.330 (71 wRC+) with four homers in 54 games. He spent about two and a half months down on the farm, returning to the majors on August 17, a point at which the Tigers were 59-64. If nothing else, he’d have another shot at the bigs while the team played out the string.

Torkelson did more than that, hitting a respectable .248/.338/.444 (125 wRC+) with six homers in 151 PA the rest of the way. He wasn’t the team’s hottest hitter, but his performance helped the Tigers go a major league best 27-12 over their final 39 games, good enough to snatch a Wild Card berth away from the slumping Twins. For as tempting as it is to connect that late-season improvement to this season’s hot start, Torkelson has not only made some changes to his mechanics and approach, he’s had to reclaim his spot on the roster.

In late December, after the Tigers signed free agent Gleyber Torres, president of baseball operations Scott Harris said that the team would move incumbent second baseman Colt Keith to first, leaving Torkelson to fight for time at first and designated hitter. Torkelson took the news in stride; as he told reporters once he arrived at the Tigers’ spring training facility in Lakeland, Florida, “I haven’t shown that I can play consistently and there’s people who have decisions to make, important decisions. And I haven’t given them a real solid belief in trusting [me] to this point.”

Over the winter, Torkelson worked to be more athletic and less robotic with his swing, better able to adjust to pitches in various parts of the strike zone. To the untrained eye, the changes were subtle. As The Athletic’s Cody Stavenhagen described them: “A more narrow stance. A change in posture with a hint of bend at the waist. A slightly different load.”

Torkelson turned heads with his spring training performance, covering the plate better, hitting the ball harder, and reestablishing his spot not only on the roster but in the lineup. He even played the outfield for the first time as a professional, though he had done so for most of his high school career in Petaluma, California, and during his time in the Cape Cod League in 2018 and ’19; in between, he even dabbled in the outfield at Arizona State.

“It’s fun to go into spring and try to turn it on right away instead of making excuses. ‘Oh, it’s just spring training,’” Torkelson said in late March. “No, let’s lock in, let’s attack every pitch, try to win every single day. I think it helped me.”

On Opening Day, Torkelson served as the Tigers’ DH (he walked four times in addition to homering off Vesia) while Keith played first base and Torres second. That configuration lasted just one more day, as Torres strained an oblique while homering on March 28. Keith did most of the work at the keystone during Torres’ time on the injured list, with Torkelson reclaiming first base. Since Torres’ return on Friday, Keith has DHed twice, but he’s struggled to such an extent (.184/.344/.224, 84 wRC+) that a trip to Toledo isn’t out of the question.

As for Torkelson, it’s not that hard to see the changes to his setup. For the visuals, I’ve chosen three plate appearances at Comerica Park that resulted in home runs to keep the camera angle and outcomes consistent. Here’s a shot he hit last May 12 off the Astros’ Seth Martinez:

And here’s one after he returned from the minors, on August 28 off the Angels’ Griffin Canning:

Note how upright Torkelson stands before both of those pitches. Now here he is against Carrasco on April 8, more bent at the waist and knees:

Here’s the side-by-side comparison:

If that visual isn’t enough, we now have supporting data courtesy of Statcast’s new batting stance data (this runs through Sunday):

Relative to the pitcher, Torkelson is standing nearly six inches farther back in the box than last year, and he’s about two inches farther off the plate. Where his stance angle — defined as “the angle of a line connecting the batter’s feet, relative to a line going straight toward the pitcher ” — was two degrees last year, it has opened to 16 degrees this year. Note also the difference in intercept points, the white dots. Where Torkelson’s average contact point was 1.9 inches in front of the plate last year, it’s now 2.9 inches behind the front of the plate this year. He’s taking a bit longer to see the pitch, to let the ball travel, and still has the bat speed to catch up, and to hit the ball hard.

On that point, Toreklson isn’t actually swinging quite as hard as in the past. Where he averaged 73.6 mph in bat speed last year, he’s at 73 mph this year, and his fast swing rate has dropped from 30.3% to 25.2%. So far, he’s squaring up the ball more frequently than in 2024 (24.4% of all swings, up from 20.5%), and his blast rate is higher (13.8% of all swings, up from 9.7%).

We’re in small-sample territory for all of these numbers, so I don’t want to put too much stock in them. But just to cherrypick some pitch-type results for the purposes of gawking, I’ll note that where Torkelson hit .226 and slugged .441 against four-seam fastballs last year, he’s hitting .444 and slugging .944 this year, and the numbers are even sillier for sliders (.238 AVG/.413 SLG last year, .556 AVG/1.444 SLG this year), with a whiff rate that’s dropped from 34% to 18.8%.

Look at how much harder Torkelson is hitting the ball:

Again, these numbers haven’t stabilized, so it’s too early to say how much of this will stick, but you can see that Torkelson is getting far more bang for his buck. Part of that is his extreme 62.5% pull rate, up from 47.1% last year; his pulled air rate of 40% is tied for third among all qualifiers, right up there with Isaac Paredes and José Ramírez, who were respectively first and sixth last year, and are second and sixth thus far this year, so it’s not as though the leaderboards have been turned entirely upside down.

For as hard as Torkelson is hitting the ball, making contact is still a concern. His 29.6% strikeout rate is higher than in any full season, up from 27.6% overall last year, though below the 32.5% mark he posted in his late-season return. He is doing a better job of covering the whole plate; where 13 of his 16 barrels last year came in the horizontal middle of the zone, five of his six this year have been on the inner or outer thirds, and where he didn’t homer at all on pitches in the upper or lower corners of the zone (Gameday zones 1, 3, 7 and 9) in 2024, he’s checked off three of those four boxes already.

Torkelson is bound to cool off at some point, particularly as he faces better pitching. Even so, he’s shown that he can adapt, and his new mechanics and approach give him a better shot at living up to the high expectations that come with being a top pick.