The Spencer Torkelson backstory 

Spencer Torkelson was the first overall draft pick for the Detroit Tigers in 2020 and has had an interesting career in that time frame. He was at one point the number one prospect in baseball and had 70-grade power, and a 60-grade hit tool slapped on him right away. 

I mean… If you break a record held by Barry Bonds as a freshman (most home runs by a freshman), you deserve those grades.

Those are lofty expectations for anyone, but as a college bat of his level, those were fair grades. His initial assessment was someone who can control the strike zone and do a great deal of damage with the pitches he wants to hit. That rang true immediately.

In his first full minor league season between High-A West Michigan, Double-A Erie, and Triple-A Toledo, Torkelson hit .267 with 30 home runs, 91 RBI, a .935 OPS, a 14.5% Walk rate, and a solid 21.5% Strikeout rate. Once that year happened, it was a matter of when, not if, he’d come up. He made the opening day roster out of Spring Training in 2022, and it was on from there.

The excitement was real, and for good reason. He struggled mightily out of the gates and found himself back in Triple-A. Not what you want to see from your 1:1, but he was still young and finding his footing.

Torkelson found his way back near the end of 2022 and played well in October. Albeit a small sample size, he had a .927 OPS in his final 18 at-bats; there was a glimpse of what he could be.

Fast forward to 2023, and Torkelson seemed ready to show why he was so highly thought of. It wasn’t quite yet make or break, but another down year, and it could have been a much steeper climb.

But he mashed the ball. Not without a slow start, but he had a great back half of the season. He hit 19 home runs and had an .816 OPS after the All-Star break. I, for one, thought this was the arrival of Spencer Torkelson.

He put together a nice-looking year, ranking in the 83rd percentile for xSLG, 87th percentile in Average Exit Velocity (91.8 MPH), 89th percentile in Barrel rate, 94th percentile in Hard-Hit rate, and was in the 80s for both Bat Speed and Chase rate. He was hitting the ball extremely hard and wasn’t chasing a lot, sticking true to his scouting report.

But, he had a 25% Strikeout rate, which was below the league average, and a Whiff rate of 24.7%, which was around league average. He didn’t square up the ball a lot either. All things that were issues for him in years past. But they were somewhat overlooked because he hit the ball well, and he put up 31 home runs in his first real season as an MLB player.

The expectations remained high going into 2024, it was supposed to be a big year for Torkelson. He had just hit 31 home runs and driven in 94 runs, while ranking up with some of the best hitters in the league in advanced stats. 

He started dreadfully. It didn’t get much better from there, he had a bad April and May. He didn’t hit for a lot of power, and didn’t get on base much either. That led to him being sent down to Triple-A.

The situation was always odd: a breakout first overall pick, sent down after his biggest and best season? It simply doesn’t happen very often.

In Toledo, he hit the ball fairly well, and he was getting on base a lot more. But there lies the problem. Torkelson was becoming too selective at times and not doing damage with the pitches he did choose to swing at. 

He eventually made his way back to the bigs in August, and he did well. Torkelson put together a .945 OPS in 57 plate appearances. He also hit three home runs while walking less and swinging more. But that came with a 31.5% Strikeout rate that same month. He played poorly again to end the year, notching just a .677 OPS in September, his strikeouts went up, and so did his walks.

Torkelson was not doing damage, not making contact, and reverting to being more selective, which ended up being a driving factor in his OBP still being north of .300. His chase rate on the season remained at a good level, but he was striking out and whiffing more throughout the entirety of the season than he usually did.

And you’re wondering why… Why am I breaking down something we already knew? Well, it’s going to be important when I talk about why he’s been much more successful this season. And why I can see it continuing.

The Stance

Batting stances tend to evolve, even every year for some guys, but the variation is never too drastic, unless it needs to change drastically.

I will spare you the several photos and videos I looked at. But I’ll break down what I noticed and why that may matter. 

Starting with Torkelson at Arizona State. His stance was crouched and just a bit open, but he was short and quick to the ball. Torkelson’s quick bat path allowed him not only to clear his hips on inside pitches, but the quick strike swing allowed him to maintain a lot of power to the opposite field. 

When Torkelson is at his best, you’ll notice a fair amount of pretty powerful opposite-field drives, home runs, or extra-base hits. It’s something he did a lot in 2023. 

His stance in his first season in Toledo was similar to his stance at ASU. He was a bit more open and a bit more relaxed. He hit well, so no problems there.

And then we get to 2022, when a lot of his problems as a hitter in the MLB began. Now, I am not a hitting expert, and I also am not discrediting the organization in any way, nor am I discrediting Torkelson.

But I began to notice a longer, loopier, slower swing path in Torkelson’s game, and it’s not every time, but his hands were not catching up nearly as well to fastballs. His bat speed was not recorded to this point, though.

He began staying more upright, more open, and more relaxed with the bat now on his shoulder, rather than just off with some waggle. 

2023, Torkelson’s big year, you see him start to do damage to all fields, pulling the ball less, and looking to pull it less. He strikes out a little less, and we see that his bat speed is pretty high, with an average of 75 MPH. He’s getting to more pitches and doing a lot more damage with a shorter load. He’s just a bit more crouched than 2022, has his bat off the shoulder, and has a faster, shorter load, as I mentioned before. 

I don’t know why or what changed in 2024. But this is when I see his bat speed go down, his stance becomes a bit flatter. His bat flattens just a bit, he closes himself off more, and he becomes more relaxed again. Rogelio highlighted some of those changes last year in his time in Toledo.

We talked about what happened that year. He had an extremely rough start to the season, and was whiffing and striking out a LOT.

His second stint up in the MLB, where we start to see some improvement, also comes with a new stance, more similar to his early stance. It’s still somewhat closed, but he has more bend, a higher front elbow, and the bat is tighter to his body. He started to do more damage once again, and it has led us to now.

This season, Torkelson is more open, has more bend, and has his bat higher and more vertical. It’s noticeably similar to his early stances at ASU and in the first go around in the minor leagues, where he flat out raked. The main difference is the bat’s verticality before his load.

His bat speed has surprisingly gone down while his production has gone up significantly to this point. He’s getting the ball in the air much more and is looking to do more damage with pitches inside the zone than years past. His feet are much closer, and he’s further in the box, allowing him to do damage with the ball deeper into the zone, while allowing him to use his massive pull power too.

Bat speed does matter, as often the highest bat speeds in the league are power guys, but usually not great all-around hitters in most cases. He’s still maintaining a fairly good bat speed and is just behind Fernando Tatis Jr. and not far behind Mike Trout. So I wouldn’t pay too much attention to it, unless, of course, it goes up or down a significant amount and his production changes.

Part of that has to do with his swing length, which is in the top 30 for longest in MLB. It’s often noticeable that the slowest bat speeds are also the shortest swing lengths (Luis Arraez is a prime example). Again, there are some obvious trends between the two in terms of power vs. average, but there are quite a few anomalies that make the discussion much more difficult.

Torkelson’s evolution over time is truly fascinating to look at, and it’s one of the few cases where I’ve noticed multiple significant changes, but he finally seems to be at the base of his initial stance and swing. Trying new things to see what sticks as you figure things out, and get figured out, is one of the coolest parts of the sport.

Lastly, the stats

Okay, enough baseball babbling. I love hitting, I only loved hitting growing up for the most part (I was a below-average infielder, to say the least), so it’s one of my favorite things to talk about. 

Torkelson has an .877 OPS, 12 home runs, and 35 RBI to this point in the year. That alone, through 191 plate appearances, is a better year than all of 2024, in which he had 381 plate appearances. 

I mean, look at this Baseball Savant page:

While his Whiff rate and Strikeout rate are still high, he’s swinging more and making contact more, too. So neither of those stats is as alarming as they were before. Especially because he’s walking 12.8% of the time in his plate appearances, which is into the upper echelon of the league (84th percentile).

He’s striking out less on pitches that are middle-middle or middle-in and even up and in, which tells me that he’s putting the ball into play more, obviously, but he’s doing damage with those pitches again, too.

These are all things that he’s not quite done since 2023, and is even doing better in 2025 than 2023 as well. He’s still not chasing the ball much either. All of these things point to a good trend, even if he’s had a bit worse May than April to this point (not by much).

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