Spencer Torkelson

The Tigers rearranged their infield when they signed Gleyber Torres last month. He’ll play second base, a move that pushes Colt Keith to first base. The trickle-down effect is to block the clearest path to at-bats for 2020 first overall pick Spencer Torkelson.

As one would expect, Detroit’s baseball operations president Scott Harris pushed back against the idea that adding Torres squeezed Torkelson out of the picture. “My message to Tork was: ’if you have a big offseason and a big Spring Training, there’s a role for you on this team.’ This team needs more right-handed power and we’ve seen Tork do that in the past,” Harris said last month.

That may be true, but it’s also not difficult to imagine a change-of-scenery trade. In an MLBTR poll last week, a plurality of respondents felt that Torkelson would be dealt before Opening Day. At times, he has flashed the power that made him a top pick. He hit 31 homers in 2023. While his overall batting line wasn’t great, a .238/.318/.498 showing in that season’s second half provided hope that he’d taken a step forward. Even if he didn’t look like an all-around impact bat, he showed the potential for plus power. Torkelson’s production tanked in 2024, as he hit just .219/.295/.374 with 10 longballs over 92 MLB games. He spent more than a third of the season in Triple-A, where he drew a ton of walks but struck out at a 31% clip.

This may be the last opportunity for the Tigers to recoup anything of note in a Torkelson trade. While he certainly doesn’t have the value he had during his prospect days, Detroit would find some interest if they shopped him. Another down year could make him a DFA or non-tender candidate as he heads into what’d be his first year of arbitration. It’s possible Torkelson spends enough time in the minors this year that he doesn’t reach arbitration, but that would burn his last option season. If the Tigers keep him in Triple-A for that long, they’d be hard-pressed to carry him on the 2026 Opening Day roster.

Which teams are best suited to take a flier on Torkelson? Every team could theoretically fit, since he’s set for a salary around the league minimum and has one minor league option remaining. Still, it doesn’t make much sense for a team that has both first base and designated hitter solidified (i.e. Astros, Dodgers, Braves) to give up anything of note just to keep Torkelson in Triple-A. We’re looking for clubs that could realistically give him 400 or more plate appearances going into a make-or-break year.

Best Fits (listed alphabetically)

• Giants: San Francisco has been loosely tied to Pete Alonso this offseason. While it seems they’re reluctant to make a multi-year commitment at first base, they’ve looked for ways to add power. Installing a potential 30-homer bat at shortstop in Willy Adames helps, but the Giants are lacking pop in their first base/designated hitter mix. LaMonte Wade Jr. is an OBP-focused hitter who has come up in trade rumors. The Giants could use a committee approach at DH with the likes of Wilmer Flores, Brett Wisely and former top prospect Marco Luciano. While Torkelson would add another right-handed bat to a lineup that skews to that side, he carries a higher ceiling than Flores provides at this stage of his career. Wade will be a free agent next offseason, so there’s room for both Torkelson and top prospect Bryce Eldridge as a long-term first base/DH combination if both players work out.
• Mariners: Seattle’s only acquisition of note this offseason is the signing of Donovan Solano to a $3.5MM free agent deal. He’s a righty hitter who may spend the majority of his time at first base. Solano is a part-time player who has only reached 400 plate appearances in a season once. He’s going into his age-37 campaign. Solano can factor in at second and third base, neither of which are settled in Seattle. The M’s could find at-bats for Torkelson, especially if they offload part of the Mitch Haniger or Mitch Garver salaries via trade, though his kind of power-over-hit approach hasn’t traditionally played well at T-Mobile Park.
• Marlins: Most of the time, these trade fit exercises focus on competitive teams. Rebuilding clubs don’t often acquire major league talent. Torkelson’s four years of contractual control make this a different situation. If Miami still feels he’s a long-term regular, there’s a straightforward case for taking a flier. The Marlins could play Torkelson regularly for a season or two and market him as a more valuable trade chip down the line. If he flops, it’s not likely that they’ve taken at-bats away from any core pieces. Presumptive first baseman Jonah Bride hit well over 272 plate appearances last season, but he’s 29 years old and has a career .232/.325/.342 slash line in the majors. Deyvison De Los Santos could get at-bats at DH if the Fish want to give him a look.
• Padres: San Diego has yet to make a payroll-clearing trade from their infield. If they don’t, they’ll run things back with Luis Arraez at first base. They don’t have anyone slated for regular DH work, though, and payroll space is limited. Torkelson would be an affordable bat they could plug in there to divide time with Arraez between first base and designated hitter.
• Rockies: The Miami logic applies to the Rockies — arguably even more so. Former first-round pick Michael Toglia is a career .206/.287/.406 hitter. He hit 25 homers but struck out in almost a third of his plate appearances last year. He’s not demonstrably better than Torkelson, at least, and the Rox could be intrigued by the latter’s power upside at Coors Field. The DH spot is open after Charlie Blackmon’s retirement. Colorado can’t rely on Kris Bryant to stay healthy.

Plausible Long Shots

• Blue Jays: Toronto has kicked around the idea of playing Vladimir Guerrero Jr. at third base more often. They don’t have a clear option for regular DH work. That Pete Alonso is on their radar suggests they’re not opposed to adding a first baseman. That could be an approach specific to Alonso rather than a buy-low candidate like Torkelson, though.
• Brewers: Milwaukee doesn’t have room for Torkelson right now. They’d no doubt love to offload a good portion of Rhys Hoskins’ $18MM salary. That’s easier than done, but if they line up a Hoskins deal, they could view Torkelson as a viable (and much more affordable) target to backfill first base.
• Reds: Cincinnati’s infield has gone from a perceived area of depth to its most significant weakness within a year. They’ve already attempted to address it this offseason with the acquisition of Gavin Lux to rotate between second and third base. First base remains a big question mark after Christian Encarnacion-Strand’s injury-plagued season and the down year from Jeimer Candelario. There’s enough rebound potential with both players that the Reds may not feel Torkelson is an upgrade, but it should at least be on the table.
• Twins: Minnesota is looking for a right-handed bat. That’s likelier to come in the outfield, but they also haven’t addressed first base since losing Carlos Santana to free agency. Torkelson could compete with Jose Miranda and Edouard Julien for reps between first and DH. Intra-division trades are rarely easy to pull off, especially when both teams are aiming for a playoff spot. However, a Torkelson trade would be (at least to an extent) an acknowledgement on Detroit’s part that they don’t believe he’ll be the player he was expected to become as a prospect. That could reduce their hesitancy about moving him to another AL Central team.

The Tigers enjoyed an incredible late-season surge and rode a strong September to not only an 85-win campaign but a playoff berth that brought them within one game of their first ALCS appearance since 2013. With a bona fide ace in Tarik Skubal and a core of talented young hitters like Riley Greene, Kerry Carpenter, and Parker Meadows in place, it seems clear that the time has come for the club to be aggressive in supplementing that impressive core. To that end, president of baseball operations Scott Harris highlighted two major needs for the club at his end-of-season press conference: a quality right-handed bat and starting pitching help.

For a club that was reluctant to rely on any starting pitchers aside from Skubal in the postseason, finding rotation upgrades this season should be fairly easy. Adding a bat to the lineup, however, could be a bit more complicated given the club’s current construction on offense. The aforementioned trio of Greene, Carpenter, and Meadows are all outfielders, though Carpenter typically finds most of his playing time as a DH rather than on the outfield grass. The club is also deep in other potential outfield options, such as Matt Vierling, Justyn-Henry Malloy, Wenceel Perez, and Akil Baddoo.

While it’s certainly possible to squeeze a big bat such as Tyler O’Neill or Teoscar Hernandez into the lineup in right field, doing so would be a sub-optimal solution given the club’s deep cache of outfield options. Second base seems like an even more unlikely spot for an upgrade given the club’s six-year commitment to Colt Keith at the keystone, which they made last winter prior to his MLB debut. With a 97 wRC+ overall during his rookie campaign thanks to a .285/.338/.437 slash line in the last three months of the season, Keith certainly seems to have earned another crack at regular at-bats at the position.

That leaves few obvious places where the club could upgrade its offense. Perhaps there’s room for an offensive upgrade behind the plate, and rumors that Willson Contreras could be available as the Cardinals look to reduce payroll this winter would make for an on-paper match. As impressive as Contreras’s 133 wRC+ over the past three seasons has been, however, he’s a lackluster defender behind the plate and is headed for his age-33 season next year. Given that, it’s reasonable to wonder if Detroit would prefer to stick with the defensively excellent (if offensively lacking) Jake Rogers and youngster Dillon Dingler behind the plate next year. Dingler struggled in his first taste of big league action this year, but impressed with a 139 wRC+ at Triple-A this year and could improve offensively as he gets his feet wet in the majors.

That leaves the infield as perhaps the most likely place for the Tigers to find the right-handed offensive upgrade they desire, and free agency figures to play host to a handful of intriguing options should they be willing to spend. Willy Adames would certainly be a substantial upgrade to the club’s current shortstop mix, though adding a nine-figure commitment at the position when Javier Baez is still guaranteed $73MM over the next three seasons could be difficult to stomach. Meanwhile, third baseman Alex Bregman stands out as perhaps the other top free agent infielder and could be a somewhat clean fit for the Tigers if they’re uninterested in holding out a position for 2022 first-rounder Jace Jung, who posted a 102 wRC+ in his first taste of big league action this year but struck out at a 30.9% clip.

There is one other position where the club could clearly upgrade in free agency, and it’s one that would be shocking to suggest a few short years ago: first base. 2020 first-overall pick Spencer Torkelson was a consensus top-five prospect in the game prior to his MLB debut, dubbed virtually from the day he was drafted as a can’t-miss hitter with superstar potential. That hasn’t panned out to this point, however, as his offensive contributions through his third season in the majors have actually been below average overall. In 361 career games in the majors, Torkelson has hit just .221/.300/.392 with a wRC+ of 95. Perhaps that would be acceptable for a player with more defensive value, but Torkelson has generally been a below-average defender at one of the least demanding defensive positions on the diamond to this point in his career, leaving him with just 0.8 fWAR accumulated in his big league career to this point.

Of course, that’s not to say that there’s no reason for optimism regarding Torkelson. Perhaps the most significant factor in the slugger’s favor is his age, as he’ll play next year at just 25 years old. By comparison, rookie first baseman Michael Busch delivered a solid inaugural season (119 wRC+, 2.3 fWAR) with the Cubs this year but is currently just two weeks shy of his 27th birthday. Fellow 1-1 pick Adley Rutschman had just 410 big league plate appearances under his belt on his 25th birthday, a mark Torkelson eclipsed in just the second game of his age-23 season.

It’s also worth noting that Torkelson has managed to deliver quality offense over shorter stretches. Just 13 months ago, MLBTR’s Darragh McDonald wrote about Torkelson’s mid-season improvements at the plate that allowed him to slash an impressive .242/.322/.500 (124 wRC+) with 20 home runs in his final 80 games of the 2023 campaign. A similar late-season surge occurred when he was called back up in mid-August of this year following a mid-season demotion: over the final six weeks of the season, Torkelson hit .248/.338/.444 with a wRC+ of 125.

That type of offense would make him exactly the sort of impactful right-handed slugger the Tigers would like to add if he was able to sustain it over a full season. That hasn’t come to pass so far, however, and Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free-Press recently suggested things could be trending toward the sides parting ways. Petzold noted that “all signs point” to Torkelson no longer being the long-term solution at first base with a possibility that the club changes gears as soon as this winter.

Should the club decide they’d be better off pursuing a more established, reliable bat in free agency this winter, there’s a handful of options worth considering. Pete Alonso, Christian Walker, and Anthony Santander all have first base experience and could help to transform Detroit’s lineup, though Santander’s experience at first is somewhat limited. Alonso, in particular, seems to be a strong fit for the club’s needs if they decide to move on from Torkelson. He’s never posted a wRC+ below 120 in a season and will be just 30 years old next year, offering a consistency that’s difficult to match, and sensational campaigns in 2019 and 2022 saw him flash the MVP-candidate upside Tigers fans were surely dreaming on when they first drafted Torkelson.

Pivoting towards another player at first base would leave the club with a dilemma regarding what to do with Torkelson. It’s possible that semi-regular at-bats could be found for him even with an addition at first base; Carpenter has typically sat against most left-handed pitchers and played more than half of his games in the outfield this year, leaving room for Torkelson to start find frequent at-bats at DH, including starts against virtually every southpaw.

The club might be better off exploring what’s out there on the trade market, however. After all, Torkelson’s youth, pedigree, and impressive results at the big league level in short stretches could make him an attractive change-of-scenery candidate for an up-and-coming team with a hole at first base like the Nationals, or even a more established club with a need at the position like the Astros. If a club was willing to offer big league pitching in return for Torkelson’s services, that would surely be a difficult proposition for the Tigers to turn down if they were already eyeing an upgrade over Torkelson at first base.

The Tigers had a very concerning season in 2022. They had entered the year with their sights set on returning to contention. A young core of prospects had bubbled up to the majors and it was hoped that big free agent deals for players like Javier Báez and Eduardo Rodriguez could supplement them. Unfortunately, just about everything went wrong. All over the roster, players either underperformed or missed significant time or both. That applied to each of Báez and Rodriguez, as well as several of the younger guys.

One of those young players that had high hopes pinned on them was Spencer Torkelson. After the Tigers had a dismal 47-114 season in 2019, they secured the first overall pick in the 2020 draft and used it on Torkelson. Due to the pandemic, there were no minor leagues for him to play in that year but he nonetheless shot all the way up to #5 on Baseball America’s 2021 list of the top 100 prospects in the league. That was largely based on his tremendous performance in college. In 129 games for Arizona State, he had 54 home runs and a batting line of .337/.463/.729.

In 2021, the minor leagues were back and he shot through them. He began the year in High-A but was in Double-A by June and Triple-A by August. He hit 30 home runs in 121 games and drew walks in 14.5% of his plate appearances, showing both power and plate discipline. His combined batting line of .267/.383/.552 amounted to a wRC+ of 148.

The Tigers added him to their Opening Day roster in 2022 and it was hoped that he would be entrenched at first base for a long time to come. But he didn’t hit the ground running, or even crawling for that matter. He hit a paltry .197/.282/.295 through the middle of July, results poor enough to get him optioned down to the minors. That performance was especially concerning since his bat has long been considered his carrying tool. Without especially strong speed or defensive skills to give him a solid floor, he essentially needs to hit and clearly didn’t do that. The power potential was still in there if you looked, as his maximum exit velocity was considered to be in the 80th percentile at that time. But he wasn’t squaring it up often enough, with his hard hit rate in the 39th percentile and his barrel percentage 37th.

He played 35 Triple-A games that summer and produced around league average, before getting recalled to the big leagues when rosters expanded in September. He hit .219/.292/.385 down the stretch, which only amounted to a 94 wRC+, but was still better than the 68 wRC+ he had before his demotion.

As mentioned, the struggles of Torkelson were just one of the many things that went wrong for the club. They finished the season 66-96, nowhere near the contender status they envisioned. General manager Al Avila was fired along the way, with Scott Harris hired as president of baseball operations to replace him as they top baseball decision maker in Detroit.

Expectations were far different for 2023, both for the Tigers and Torkelson. Many had already written off the former first round pick as a bust, even though he was still just 23 years old at the start of the campaign. He didn’t do much to change those peoples’ mind in the early going of this year either, as he was hitting just .206/.266/.309 through the end of April.

But as the calendar flipped to May, more encouraging results came. From the start of that month through the end of July, he hit 13 home runs and produced a much more respectable .233/.317/.433 line for a wRC+ of 106. He has taken things to another level since the start of August, hitting 13 more home runs in his past 43 games. His slash in that time is .248/.342/.547 for a 141 wRC+. The Stork, which no one calls him but perhaps they should, has taken flight.

For the season as a whole, his batting line of .233/.315/.444 is only marginally above league average, translating to a 107 wRC+. But the Statcast data likes him a lot, with his average exit velocity in the 88th percentile, his barrel percentage 90th and his hard hit rate 93rd. His 24.7% strikeout rate is a bit above league average, but he’s also drawing walks at a strong 10.1% clip. Given that he’s gotten better as the season has gone along, perhaps he can carry that over into 2024 and have an even better year.

Although the Tigers surely would have loved for this breakout to have occurred last year, the silver lining of Torkelson’s struggles in 2022 is that it secured them an extra year of control of his services. Since he was optioned to Triple-A for about six weeks last year, he didn’t earn a full year of service time. That means he can be controlled through the 2028 season, whereas he would have been set for free agency after 2027 if he had stayed up all of last year.

As they move forward and try to build a competitive club in those years, they still have many challenges. There are still question marks on the roster, including the pitching staff and the middle infield. But their first base situation looks to be in good shape, especially compared to where it was just one year ago.

Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.