Of the 136 MLB players with at least 700 plate appearances since the start of last season, Spencer Torkelson is last with a minus-1.4 fWAR. He ranks 133rd in both OPS (.628) and wRC+ (80). And despite a brief hot streak earlier this month, he's batting .176 in June. He's 4-for-41 over the last 10 games as the Tigers try to stay alive in the AL Central.
To which Valenti says: "How close are you to calling Spencer Torkelson a bust?"
"I don’t think there’s a wrong answer here. I’ll just tell you he’s got the next 300 at-bats, AKA the rest of the season. Once you’ve put damn near 1,000 at-bats on tape, that’s who you are, man."
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For all the ire directed toward Javy Baez and more recently Nick Maton, Valenti says Torkelson deserves his share of criticism from the Tigers fanbase as a former No. 1 overall pick:
"I can’t give up yet, but am I on the road driving toward Exit 87, known as Give Up? Yes, I am. He’s got the rest of this year. I can’t keep watching a guy who can’t make contact, who takes room service pitching and if we’re going to sit here and crush Nick Maton, who’s a nobody, Spencer Torkelson was the No. 1 pick in the draft, a college bat, prodigious power, and he has come to Major League Baseball and been, simply put, one of the singular worst players in the sport."
Torkelson's batted ball data this season has been much more encouraging than his actual results, including a hard-hit rate that places him in the 84th percentile of big-league hitters. But the results are what matters most, and they haven't been up to snuff for a hitter who's supposed to anchor the Tigers' lineup for years to come.
And while Valenti acknowledges that "every prospect’s journey is not a linear progression, you get to 600, 700 at-bats and I see nothing -- buddy, I’m kind of out of gas."
"I’m being nice because we have no other options, and I’m giving him the rest of this season. But if he finishes this year looking like this, and he’s 1,000 at-bats deep, we’re done here. For me. I will enter next season as, 'That dude sucks and I don’t have much hope.'"
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