It's been a rough go for Spencer Torkelson this season. A year after he put up 31 home runs and 94 RBIs, the promise shown by the No. 1 overall pick in the 2020 MLB Draft has all but gone away.
Torkelson was left out of the Tigers' lineup on Friday and again Sunday as he's now gone a brutal 3-for-37 with 13 strikeouts in the last 10 games, with all of those hits coming in one game.
Questions are being asked whether it might be time for Torkelson to be sent down to Triple-A Toledo to work some things out. When asked in early May, manager A.J. Hinch quickly shot that idea down.
But ahead of Sunday's series finale at Fenway Park, he gave quite the different answer.
"I don't know," Hinch said Sunday, according to Evan Petzold of The Detroit Free Press. "I knew I was going to get asked the question when he sits two out of three days. We haven't talked a ton about things like that this morning. We're trying to find a way to win the game today. That's the No. 1 important thing."
If Torkelson were to head down to the farm, it would be the second time in three seasons. He was sent to Toledo after the All-Star Break during his rookie season in 2022.
Torkelson said Sunday, according to the Free Press report, his struggles come from "a little bit of everything," but perhaps more than most it's his approach.
"When you're not seeing the ball well, it feels like you're getting one pitch a game to do damage with, and that's what it feels like. And then when you're hot, it feels like every single pitch you get that's in the strike zone is a meatball. It's just getting back to that," Torkelson said, according to the report.
Hinch said he thinks "there's some mechanics things with [Torkelson], where his weight is distributed, his lower half, trusting a lot of the work he's doing in the cage to be consistent, but it's a lot harder than just an analysis or a suggestion. Everyone in his ear is trying to get him to do something positive," according to the Freep.
A timeline on when a potential demotion could happen is not clear.
