Tork's luck finally turns as 1st blast of season lifts Tigers 

DETROIT -- Spencer Torkelson wasn’t worried, even if you understandably might have been worried for him.

The metrics suggested his first home run of the season was coming. Just as important for him, the way he felt at the plate suggested the clock was ticking on the first Tork Bomb of the year. The reason to fear was history: After his breakout 31-homer season in 2023, he didn’t hit his first homer of 2024 until the Tigers’ 40th game of the season and his 147th at-bat.

Surely it couldn’t happen again, could it?

“Tork’s great,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “He’s been working incredibly hard. We’re just wanting him to continue to believe and continue to fight, and he does.”

He was waiting for his pitch and hitting the ball hard; he just wasn’t hitting the ball far … or far enough. Then came Chad Patrick’s sinker, which Torkelson lined over Comerica Park’s left-field fence for a two-run homer that gave Detroit the lead for good in a 5-2 win over the Brewers on Wednesday night.

Finally.

“I kept reminding myself: It’s coming,” Torkelson said. “It felt amazing.”

Torkelson’s first home run since Sept. 20 of last year had seemingly been imminent, at least looking at his Baseball Savant page awash in red and pink for above-average data entering Wednesday. His elite chase rate (97th percentile) and walk rate (93rd percentile) showed a patient approach, even as his strikeout rate climbed to a career-high 30.2 percent. His bat speed, hard-hit rate and sweet-spot rate are all up or comparable to last year, showing he has been hitting balls capable of damage.

One big difference: Torkelson entered Wednesday batting just .225 with a .275 slugging percentage against fastballs, despite a higher average exit velocity of 93.1 miles per hour off the heater. His average launch angle against fastballs, however, had dropped from 22 degrees last year to 16 so far this season.

What helped Torkelson through it?

“Just know that this is a tough game, and you’re not always going to see results,” Torkelson said. “I was seeing the ball great. I was hitting the ball decently hard. Just got a little bit of bad luck, but I knew it was going to come.”

Torkelson seemed headed for the same fate Wednesday. After laying off changeups to draw a 3-1 count in his first at-bat, he got a 93.4 mph sinker from Brewers lefty opener DL Hall and crushed it on a line to left. The 106.2 mph exit velocity was his highest of the season up to that point. But the 18-degree launch angle sent it to Brewers left fielder Brandon Lockridge for the first out of the second inning. It was Torkelson’s 13th ball with a triple-digit exit velocity this season, but just three had gone for hits.

“That’s a win in my eyes,” Torkelson said. “Obviously it’s an 0-for-1, but what are you going to do? You can’t totally manipulate where the ball goes every time.”

Two innings later, Torkelson stepped to the plate against Patrick, who entered his bulk assignment Wednesday with just a 12 percent strikeout rate this season but a mere .152 average (5-for-33) against right-handed hitters. He had succeeded this year by attacking righty hitters with fastballs (84.5 percent of his pitches had been four-seamers, sinkers or cutters) on the outer half of the plate (better than two-thirds of his pitches to right-handers had been on the outer half, according to Statcast).

“You really just pick one of them, because he’s got three different shapes of fastballs,” Torkelson said. “Can’t really complicate it too much. Just pick one of them and not try to do too much with it.”

Again, Torkelson worked into a favorable count by laying off pitches out of the zone. Patrick spotted a 2-0 cutter on the outside corner that Torkelson fouled off. Patrick’s 2-1 sinker wandered over the middle, and Torkelson crushed it. The 106.4 mph exit velocity was even harder than his first at-bat, but his 24-degree launch angle was higher, allowing him to send it over the bullpen and to the front row of the left-field seats, nearly dropping into the hole in the glove of the Little Caesar’s mascot between the bullpens.

“We’ve been aiming for that for a while,” Torkelson said. “They even made it bigger.”

That was the swing. That has been the swing much of the year. Finally, this was the result.

“We all know how good Tork is,” said Kevin McGonigle, whose RBI double off Patrick and add-on run in the fifth inning provided more support for starter Casey Mize (2-1). “It’s part of baseball. I’ve never seen a bad day from him off the field or in the clubhouse.”