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Joey Wentz

Tigers Notes: Lorenzen, Wentz, Vest, Haase, Rogers

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Tigers right-hander Michael Lorenzen is going to start the season on the 15-day injured list, manager A.J. Hinch indicated this afternoon (relayed by Chris McCosky of the Detroit News). The offseason signee is dealing with a left groin strain. Hinch indicated it’s not expected to be a serious issue but will require Lorenzen to miss a couple turns through the rotation.

Detroit brought the veteran in on a one-year, $8.5MM guarantee over the winter. He and fellow free agent pickup Matthew Boyd were added to take the final couple rotation spots beyond Eduardo Rodriguez, Spencer Turnbull and Matt Manning.

While that’s on hold, Detroit is likely to turn to Joey Wentz as a starter, McCosky adds. The 6’5″ southpaw was first called up last May. He got into seven games during his debut campaign, working to a 3.03 ERA with a slightly below-average 20% strikeout rate. Wentz had a solid 3.17 mark across 48 1/3 frames with Triple-A Toledo. He’s gotten hit hard this spring, allowing 13 runs in 14 2/3 innings in spite of a respectable 19:6 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

No pitcher had a tougher go in Detroit camp than reliever Will Vest, however. The righty managed four innings over five appearances, giving up a staggering 13 runs on as many hits with only three strikeouts. That knocked him out of consideration for a season-opening bullpen job, as Detroit optioned him to Toledo this afternoon.

Vest looked to have a bullpen spot more or less sewn up entering camp. The 27-year-old worked 63 innings over 59 outings last season. He allowed exactly four earned runs per nine but posted average or better strikeout (23.2%), walk (8.1%) and ground-ball (49.7%) marks. Vest could certainly factor into the bullpen as the season goes along but will first have to earn his way back up.

Alongside Vest, Detroit optioned catcher Donny Sands this afternoon. Hinch told reporters that non-roster backstops Andrew Knapp and Michael Papierski were being reassigned to minor league camp (link via Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free-Press). That leaves Eric Haase and Jake Rogers as the season-opening catching duo. Haase always looked assured of a roster spot. He was one of Detroit’s most productive hitters last season and is out of options. Rogers earns the backup job as a defensive specialist, setting him up for his first MLB action since undergoing Tommy John surgery in September 2021.

Tigers To Promote Joey Wentz

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Left-hander Joey Wentz is being called up to start the Tigers’ game against the A’s on Wednesday, Tigers manager A.J. Hinch told reporters (including Evan Petzold of The Detroit Free Press).  It will be the first career Major League appearance for Wentz, the 40th overall pick of the 2016 draft.

The Braves selected Wentz in that draft, but dealt the southpaw to Detroit as part of the Shane Greene trade in July 2019.  Wentz had run into some struggles at Double-A that season, but the deal was still seen as a nice score for the then-rebuilding Tigers, as Wentz was a well-regarded young starter.  Baseball Prospectus even ranked Wentz as the 45th-best prospect in all of baseball prior to the 2018 campaign.

However, injuries took a toll, as Wentz underwent Tommy John surgery in March 2020.  Returning to action in May 2021, Wentz logged a 4.50 ERA over 72 combined innings with the Tigers’ A-ball and Double-A affiliates.  Making his Triple-A debut this season, Wentz has a 4.12 ERA and a 33.8% strikeout rate in 19 2/3 innings for the Toledo Mud Hens, though his 13% walk rate and 25% homer rate are cause for concern.

Baseball America rates the 24-year-old Wentz as the ninth-best prospect in Detroit’s farm system, while MLB Pipeline has the left-hander 12th on its list.  Wentz’s changeup is considered to be his best pitch, with BA’s scouting report citing Wentz’s changeup a nice complement with a fastball that clocks in the low 90’s.  Control has been Wentz’s biggest issue throughout his minor league career, and BA feels his ceiling in the majors is as “a back-end starter who caps at five innings or a long reliever.”

Wentz hasn’t thrown more than 4 2/3 innings or 84 pitches in any of his five outings at Triple-A, so the Tigers figures to keep him on somewhat of a short leash on Wednesday.  That said, Detroit will obviously take anything they can get, as the club continues to try and fill innings within a rotation shorthanded from injuries.  A scheduling crunch is also in play — the Tigers have a doubleheader with the Athletics today, and are in the midst of a stretch of 17 games in 15 days.

As a result, Hinch said that Wentz or Alex Faedo (who starts the second game of today’s doubleheader) will remain in the rotation until some of the regular starters are available.  “Some of it depends on performance.  Some of it depends on matchup,” Hinch said of the criteria the team will use to evaluate between Faedo and Wentz.

Matt Manning, Casey Mize, and Tyler Alexander are all on the 10-day injured list, with Manning being the closest to a return.  Manning already has one Triple-A rehab start under his belt, and he’ll toss a bullpen session today at Comerica Park before making at least one more rehab outing.  Mize is also slated to start a rehab assignment this week.

While the Tigers aren’t going to do anything to rush their prized young hurlers, reinforcements are needed quick.  The pitching injuries and an almost team-wide lack of hitting has resulted in an ugly 8-20 record for Detroit thus far, and the team has lost its last six games.

Tigers Select Matt Manning, Three Others

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The Tigers announced that they’ve selected the contracts of right-handers Matt Manning, Alex Faedo, Alex Lange and left-hander Joey Wentz in advance of tonight’s deadline to protect players from the 2020 Rule 5 Draft.

All four players were top 40 picks in their respective draft classes — Manning and Wentz in 2016, Faedo and Lange in 2017. Manning went ninth overall to the Tigers back in ’16 and stands out not only as one of the organization’s best prospects but one of the best prospects in all of baseball. He checks in at No. 15 on Baseball America’s Top 100 list, No. 18 at FanGraphs and No. 20 at MLB.com.

There was some thought that the 22-year-old Manning might even make his Major League debut for the Tigers in 2020, although that didn’t come to pass. He spent the 2019 season with Detroit’s Double-A affiliate in Erie, where he pitched to a 2.56 ERA with 10.0 K/9 against 2.6 BB/9 through 133 2/3 frames and is viewed as a potential top-of-the-rotation piece alongside fellow top prospect Casey Mize.

Both the 25-year-old Faedo and the 23-year-old Wentz factor prominently into the organization’s prospect rankings, though neither is thought to have the same ceiling as that of Manning, Mize or southpaw Tarik Skubal. Still, both are viewed as near-MLB prospects who could fill spots in the middle or back of a rotation. Wentz, acquired from the Braves in the trade that sent Shane Greene from Detroit to Atlanta, will be further off by virtue of the fact that he is on the mend from 2020 Tommy John surgery.

The Tigers picked up Lange, 25, in the trade that sent Nick Castellanos to the Cubs back in 2019. He’s a bit further off than Faedo despite being the same age, as he has just 54 2/3 frames at the Double-A level under his belt and has shown some control issues while pitching there. Still, it’s conceivable that any of Manning, Faedo or Lange could make their big league debuts next season, depending on their progress in the upper minors and on the state of the Detroit rotation. This quartet, paired with the aforementioned Mize, Skubal and righty Franklin Perez, represents but a portion of the deep reservoir of talented young arms the Tigers have stockpiled to this point in their rebuilding efforts.

Filling Out The Tigers’ Starting Rotation

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UPDATE: Zimmermann has been placed on the 45-day injured list, per MLB.com’s Jason Beck and others (Twitter links). The Tigers aren’t ruling him out for the season yet.

TODAY: Jordan Zimmermann is dealing with the same sort of forearm soreness that sapped him of much of the 2019 season, per Chris McCosky of The Detroit News. If he can stay healthy – a big if – Zimmermann would look to make the most of a short season by proving his arm still plays at the major league level. This will be the final year of the five-year, $110MM pact he signed with the Tigers before the 2016 season.

It’s been a tough couple of years for Zimmermann, who will end his contract without ever making 30 starts in a season after doing so in each of his final four seasons with the Nationals. Despite the precipitous drop in performance, the Tigers were nonetheless turning to Zimmermann as a veteran stopgap in a rotation that will soon be overrun by high-upside prospects like Tarik Skubal, Matt Manning, Franklin Perez, Casey Mize, and Joey Wentz. The rotation is already without Daniel Norris, who has yet to pitch in camp after testing positive for coronavirus.

In the meantime, the Tigers are scrambling to fill out the rotation behind ace Matthew Boyd. Veteran Ivan Nova was brought in to soak up innings (34 starts, 187 innings in 2019), and Spencer Turnbull figures to slot in somewhere in the middle of the rotation after a mostly-strong showing in 2019. Turnbull went 3-17 last season with a 4.61 ERA/3.99 FIP. He’s done a nice job of limiting long balls throughout his two seasons in the majors, and if he can improve upon some control issues that led to an AL-high 16 hit batters and 3.6 BB/9, the Tigers hope Turnbull can level off his 4.76 career ERA and land closer to his 3.88 career FIP mark.

Beyond those three, the Tigers are working on extending the innings of Dario Agrazal, Shao-Ching Chiang, Hector Santiago, and Tyler Alexander to potentially fill out the rotation. Former Rookie of the Year Michael Fulmer also has a chance to get some rotation innings, writes McCosky. Fulmer missed all of 2019 after undergoing Tommy John surgery.

Of the youngsters in camp, Mize probably has the best shot of cracking the rotation. Under normal circumstances, Mize would be ticketed for Triple-A after 22 starts with a 2.55 ERA in Double-A last year, but without minor league games to further his development, count Mize among the many young stars with a slightly better chance of breaking into the big leagues sometime during the shortened 2020 season. Seven days on the taxi squad will be enough for the Tigers to secure an extra year of service time, notes McCosky, but manager Ron Gardenhire doesn’t plan on making any official decisions until knowing more about the health of Zimmermann and Norris.

Joey Wentz Undergoes Tommy John Surgery

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Tigers lefty Joey Wentz has undergone Tommy John surgery, according to a team announcement. He’s expected to be sidelined for 14 to 16 months, the team provides.

Wentz was the 40th overall pick of the 2016 draft. He came to the Detroit organization last summer, along with outfielder Travis Demeritte, in the deal that sent reliever Shane Greene to the Braves.

This decision didn’t exactly come out of nowhere, as Wentz had dealt with forearm issues this spring. But the 22-year-old had gone back on the mound recently in hopes of moving past the health problems and preparing for the season.

Just what precipitated the decision on a surgical approach isn’t know. It’s certainly possible that Wentz suffered a setback or that the decision tipped towards an invasive procedure given the delay of the 2020 campaign.

Regardless, it’s now clear that Wentz won’t take the mound again for competitive action until the middle of the 2021 season. The Tigers won’t have any 40-man roster issues to worry about for the 2020 season, as Wentz wasn’t yet on it. But he would be eligible for the Rule 5 draft this coming winter if he isn’t protected.

 

It’s unfortunate timing for Wentz, who trended up after last summer’s swap. In his five Double-A outings with the Tigers organization, he spun 25 2/3 innings of 2.10 ERA ball while racking up an impressive 37:4 K/BB ratio.

AL Notes: C. Davis, Choo, Tigers

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Then among the most threatening sluggers in baseball, Orioles first baseman Chris Davis re-signed with the team on a seven-year, $161MM contract prior to the 2016 campaign. Davis was coming off a 47-home run, 5.4-fWAR season at the time, but his output has tanked since he signed his contract. The lefty swinger was stunningly unproductive from 2018-19 – an 854-plate appearance run in which he hit .172/.256/.308 with 28 HRs. Davis easily ranked last in the majors in fWAR in the process, accounting for minus-4.5.

The 33-year-old Davis, cognizant of how far he has fallen with the Orioles, admitted Monday (via Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com) that he recently considered retiring. “I’d be lying if I told you that wasn’t at least talked about toward the end of the season last year and this offseason,” he said. “I know what I’m capable of. I know what I expect of myself and I don’t want to continue to just struggle and be a below-average, well below-average producer at the plate. And I don’t think that’s fair to these guys. And I don’t think, honestly, it’s fair to our fans, or to anybody that’s associated with Baltimore.”

For now, Davis is hanging around and hoping for a better showing in 2020. If that doesn’t occur, though, it’ll be interesting to see if he walks away or the Orioles cut him. The soon-to-be 34-year-old still has another $69MM left on his contract (including deferrals), so an early breakup wouldn’t be easy for either side.

  • Speaking of uncertain futures, Rangers outfielder Shin-Soo Choo is going into the last season of his own lucrative the deal – the seven-year, $130MM contract he inked with the club before the 2014 campaign. It could prove to be the final season in the majors for the 37-year-old, who hasn’t decided whether to play in 2021, per Jeff Wilson of the Star-Telegram. If Choo does elect to play past this year, though, he’d like to remain a Ranger, according to Wilson. Overall, the gamble the Rangers took on Choo in free agency hasn’t necessarily worked out as planned, but he remains a solid offensive player and an on-base machine. Choo slashed .265/.371/.455 with 24 home runs and 15 stolen bases in 660 trips to the plate last season.
  • Tigers left-hander Joey Wentz halted his live bullpen session Monday as a result of forearm soreness, Chris McCosky of the Detroit News writes. Wentz brushed it off as fatigue, though it could still be worth monitoring going forward. After all, Wentz is one of the most promising arms in the Tigers’ system. The 22-year-old joined the organization last July in a trade with the Braves centering on reliever Shane Greene. Wentz then finished the season in dominant fashion as a member of the Tigers’ Double-A team, with which he pitched to a 2.10 ERA and put up 13.0 K/9 against 1.4 BB/9 across 25 2/3 innings.
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