A.J. Hinch was out to dinner following the Tigers' walk-off win over the Giants last Saturday when he heard some chatter about Spencer Torkelson's game-tying single in the 8th inning that helped erase a 6-1 deficit.
"I heard some people whispering around the restaurant where he gets a base hit to tie the game, 'but he didn't hit it hard enough' or he gets a base hit to left field, but it wasn't a double," Hinch said Wednesday on 97.1 The Ticket. "Man, it's a tough world out there when you're 23 years old and a single to tie the game in the 8th inning isn't good enough."
It was plenty good enough for the Tigers. And it was plenty good enough for Torkelson, who's hit a number of balls hard this season (you might have heard) without getting rewarded. He leads the Tigers and ranks among the top 50 hitters in the bigs in batted balls with an exit velo of at least 95 mph, but his average has hovered near .200. So yeah, Torkelson was just fine with a humpback liner that left the bat at 76.1 mph and landed softly in the left field grass.
Bur for all the focus on Torkelson's bat, A.J. Hinch points to another area of his game that had helped the Tigers win five in a row after a 2-9 start heading into Wednesday's game with the Indians.
"No one's going to celebrate this, but he's won some games for us on defense," said Hinch. "It gets largely overlooked when balls go in the dirt or things that he does in and around the bag. He's contributing, we just pay so much attention to the bat."
The advanced metrics don't love Torkelson's defense, so make of that what you will. But he has soft hands at first and a knack for picking balls out of the dirt, including a couple this season on the backend of double plays. His glove routinely erases errant throws by his teammates.
As for the metrics, he's a minus-1 in Outs Above Average and second to last among first baseman in Ultimate Zone Rating, per FanGraphs. We're also less than a month into the season.
The same qualifier applies to his bat.
"Over time, we're obviously going to need him to put up good at-bats and put up numbers and be a contributor in the middle of the order," said Hinch. "But let's him give him some at-bats to find his way and find his rhythm."
In the fifth inning Wednesday, Torkelson drilled a ball 108.2 mph that one-hopped the center field wall for a double. And in the seventh, he smoked one 109.8 mph that soared over the left-center field fence. Hit the ball hard, good things happen.
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