Workman's HR the cherry atop years of hard work

This story was excerpted from Jason Beck’s Tigers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

KANSAS CITY -- Gage Workman would’ve been excused to wonder if he was ever going to get an opportunity with the Tigers, or maybe anywhere.

He’d posted an 18-homer, 30-steal season at Double-A Erie in 2024 and was left available in the Rule 5 Draft for the Cubs to take that winter.

He lasted a month and a half as a Rule 5 pick, just 17 plate appearances over 12 games between the Cubs and White Sox, before being returned.

He was left available in the Rule 5 again last offseason but wasn’t selected. He didn’t even get a non-roster invite with the Tigers to their Major League camp in Spring Training, instead making seven appearances as an extra player from Minor League camp.

He was one of the hottest hitters at Triple-A Toledo for the first month, but watched one teammate after another get a call ahead of him as Detroit looked for injury replacements. Zack Short was brought back to the organization in a trade, called up, designated for assignment, then re-signed.

“Gage has been killing it in Triple-A,” manager A.J. Hinch said Sunday. “I mean, he's been a candidate this whole time to come up and join us when we've had these openings. Some have been short spurts; we've seen Jace [Jung] come up a couple times. When [Hao-Yu] Lee came up, his right-handedness was really important. Gage kept performing and kept playing. He has crushed Triple-A pitching pretty much all season and has earned his right to be on a call-up list whenever opportunity came open.”

Finally, opportunity knocked Sunday when the Tigers needed a replacement for Workman’s former Double-A Erie teammate Kerry Carpenter, the 15th Tiger to hit the injured list. After 593 games and 2,489 plate appearances in the Tigers farm system, Workman got the call.

And as Workman rounded the bases Sunday night on his pinch-hit, go-ahead home run, his first swing as a Detroit Tiger sending a ball down the right-field line and into the seats at Kauffman Stadium, he had every right to smile, even if it ended up being a blur.

“It felt like a quick home-run trot, just home to home pretty quick,” Workman said as somebody tossed him the ball in the clubhouse to keep.

Talent has never been a question with Workman, the Tigers’ fourth-round pick in the 2020 Draft out of Arizona State. While fellow 2020 picks Spencer Torkelson, Colt Keith and Dillon Dingler made it to Detroit faster, Workman was arguably the best athlete of the bunch, a switch-hitting third baseman with defense, speed and power potential. He posted 30-plus doubles, 30-plus stolen bases and double-digit homers in both of his first two seasons, and spent his entire age-22 season at Double-A. Every ball he hit seemed scorched.

The problem was not hitting the ball enough. He set an Erie franchise record with 206 strikeouts in that aforementioned 2022 season, nearly doubling his hit total (107). When president of baseball operations Scott Harris arrived in Detroit with an organizational goal of dominating the strike zone, it was a bad sign for Workman. He made improvements the following season, added outfield to his skill set, then gave up switch-hitting to focus on his left-handed swing in 2024, but seemed stuck in Erie.

“He's gone through a lot,” Hinch said, “whether it's the switch-hitting to left only, continually moving around the field. He's addressed some of the swing-and-miss of the early time in the Minors. He's shown the ability to make adjustments.”

The Rule 5 Draft seemed like a lifeline for him, only to be pulled quickly. He was far from the first prospect to be sent back to his old organization, but his opportunities in Chicago were limited. Workman at least got to go to Toledo, but struggled for much of the summer.

Will Vest could relate. The Tigers reliever spent half of the 2021 season with the Mariners before being sent back. He struggled upon return, just as Workman did.

“That whole year was just good in teaching me how to deal with failure at this level, because it's going to happen,” Vest said last year.

Said Workman: “I think it's just taking everything as learning, taking the ups and downs as learning and trying to just build on top of that, try to grow from it.”

But lost within Workman’s struggles was an effort to address the strikeouts and lower the chase rate. He learned during his brief big league time about the importance of stepping to the plate with a plan.

“I think when the approach matches your plan up there and you have a focused idea of what you're doing, you're putting more balls in play, you're hitting balls hard, you're taking balls out of the zone,” Workman said. “You're much more focused and you have more success doing it.”

The numbers back it up. Workman’s 23.3 percent strikeout rate through 26 games in Toledo easily would be his lowest for a pro season. His chase rate was still high at 35.3 percent, but he made contact more often than last year, both inside and outside the strike zone. That increase in contact yielded a 1.003 OPS.

Time will tell if Sunday’s homer is a sign of good times to come for Workman, still just 26 years old. But simply getting this opportunity is a tribute to persistence.

“I told him to just be yourself, to continue to build off of the routines that you had in Triple-A, because they were wildly successful,” Hinch said.