Spencer Torkelson isn't hiding from the truth. And truth is, getting sent down to Triple-A Toledo stung -- badly.
"You want to contribute to the team and I wasn’t doing that. It sucks. It’s embarrassing," Torkelson said, via the Detroit News . "But you realize the embarrassment — that’s just ego. That’s all that is. And that got knocked out of the way pretty shortly here. The biggest part for me that hurt was I felt like I was letting my teammates down. I felt like I was letting the coaching staff down — my friends, my family. That’s what weighed on me the most.
"I’m a winner at heart. I’ll do whatever it takes to win, and I felt like I wasn’t doing that. That part hurt the most. It just lights the fire a little bit more. It’s like, ‘We’re going to figure this thing out, and we’re gonna get back to where I belong.’ And I’m going to help contribute to a lot of wins for the Detroit Tigers.”
In 12 games since his demotion, Torkelson is hitting .286 with a .797 OPS -- after hitting just .201 with a .596 OPS in 54 games this year with the Tigers. He struggled over the weekend, 1-for-13 in his last three games. But as A.J. Hinch said last week, it's not the statistics that will determine when Torkelson gets called back up to Detroit.
"The quality of contact really has to be there," said Hinch. "It’s defined by hitting the ball hard. It doesn’t account for the result. The result will take care of itself if you put up a quality at-bat, swing at the right pitches and you hit it hard. ... We’re not just sending him down there to go fill the scoreboard with fancy numbers."
The Tigers want Torkelson to get back to hitting velocity. He hit .265 against four-seam fastballs last season, compared to .179 this season. Torkelson even admitted he was getting into his own head: "You can’t think about swing mechanics when you’ve been missing fastballs all year and you’re trying to figure it out."
“If you’re thinking, ‘I need to get here to hit this fastball,’ well, once you get to that point, good luck. You’re not going to hit 95-miles per hour and think about mechanics. You’re not going to have much success at any level. So, it’s basically as simple as, and as complicated as, getting back to being myself and do best what I do in the box. And that is to have absolute zero thoughts, and to be on time against any pitches.”
Torkelson, 24, doesn't lack self-belief. But after trusting for two months that his numbers would improve this season without seeing any results, he said that it got "to a point, finally, of, ‘All right, it’s got to be mechanics." And once he started overthinking things at the plate, everything spiraled.
"It’s tough to hit like that," he said. "I hit .232 with 31 homers last year and I wasn’t satisfied. That’s not the hitter I am. I’m not a .230 and 30-home-run guy. I have really high standards for myself. I know I’m capable of much more. So, maybe I was chasing more than I knew. And once you start chasing, you’re not present. You’re not locked into that at-bat. You’re chasing results. In this game, and in this life, you’re always chasing results, but they can become distractions to your process, and to everything you’re capable of doing.”
The former No. 1 pick is still a key piece of the Tigers' future, and he knows it. In the meantime in Toledo, he's "attacking every single day with a plan."
“I believe if I do that, I don’t care how long I’m here – whether it’s one day or the entire year. That’s not really up to me. But no matter what, I’m going to come out of this as a better baseball player – and probably a better person.
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