LAKELAND, Fla. -- Don’t let the 5-foot-10 frame fool you. Tyler Owens brings a lot to the mound, as Tigers hitters realized on Wednesday.
As he rears back in his delivery, he holds the ball behind his back knee before everything flies forward. Not only is his right arm flying towards the plate as he delivers a power fastball, so are his shoulder-length locks of hair.
“He looks like Jesus,” shortstop Javier Báez said of the bearded Owens, whom he faced in live batting practice Wednesday morning.
“Yeah, you hear it sometimes,” Owens said.
Owens, Detroit's No. 29 prospect, gets a lot of arm extension for such a short reliever, unleashing an upper-90s fastball that can easily catch an unsuspecting hitter off guard.
“I thought he [threw] 93,” Báez said, “and he’s [throwing] 98.”
The Tigers have built a bullpen of different looks over the past couple years, usually meaning unique arm angles and pitch arsenals. There’s a lot different about Owens, and he’s catching the Tigers’ attention in the early days of camp.
“I’ve learned a lot about him in the last week,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “He’s got really good stuff, a guy with elite velocity and can cut the ball and the split is real and it comes from a unique angle.”
Báez got him for some solid contact Wednesday, but he also had trouble on other swings. Likewise, Colt Keith sent a ground ball through the right side near the end of Wednesday’s workout, but Owens came back with a fastball on the hands, sending Keith retreating and setting him up for a nasty splitter.
“He’s quick, fast, coming at you,” said Dillon Dingler, who caught the session. “He’s got a lot of good shapes. He was fun to catch, fun to see him for the first time.”
Though the splitter is the third pitch in Owens’ arsenal, it reflects the transitory nature of his rise up the Minor Leagues. He learned it during an instructional camp while with the Braves, who drafted him out of high school in the 13th round in 2019. He went to the Rangers last January for J.P. Martinez and spent most of the summer working as a fastball-slider pitcher. But after the Tigers acquired him in the Carson Kelly trade last July, they encouraged him to dust off the splitter and use it some more.
“I started throwing it more towards the end [of the season],” Owens said. “Kind of a comfortable thing, but trying to use it as a third pitch in any count hopefully.”
Owens has thrown in 53 games (four starts) at the Double-A level over the last two years, spread out across three different organizations and three different Double-A leagues. After the Kelly trade, Owens became part of Erie’s charge to a second consecutive Eastern League title last year, and his work there helped convince the Tigers to add him to their 40-man roster to protect him from the Rule 5 Draft, even though he has yet to pitch at Triple-A. His third organization is his first chance in a Major League camp.
He has the makings of a classic power reliever in an unorthodox power reliever’s body. Then again, Billy Wagner -- one of the newest inductees to the Hall of Fame -- was also listed at 5-foot-10 during his pitching days. Former Tigers closer Fernando Rodney is listed at 5-foot-11, as is current Tigers reliever Sean Guenther.
“That’s not necessarily something that guys see every day with that kind of arm speed and that type of power stuff coming from that angle,” Hinch said.
That fits just fine for a Tigers bullpen built in part through undervalued draft picks (Beau Brieske, Will Vest), non-drafted free agents (Jason Foley) and waiver claims (Tyler Holton, Guenther) and trade acquisitions (Alex Lange). Owens is likely to begin the season with Triple-A Toledo, but with his Minor League options intact, he could put himself in position for an in-season call-up if he can continue the momentum while honing his command of the strike zone.
“Fun guy,” Hinch said, “and someone who was added to the 40 [man roster] because we think he’s knocking on the door of the big leagues based on that stuff.”