DETROIT – It was strange seeing Spencer Turnbull at Comerica Park on Monday. The red-headed pitcher who was drafted by the Detroit Tigers and debuted with the Tigers and threw a no-hitter with the Tigers stood on the floor and had long talks with pitching coach Chris Fetter and manager AJ Hinch.
He hugged a team employee and chatted with former teammates. She circled around behind home plate and signed autographs for fans dressed in Olde English D attire.
Turnbull did all of this in a red and blue cap, now a member of the Philadelphia Phillies scheduled to pitch against his former team on Wednesday.
“I don’t want to give too much credit to the ‘revenge tour’ or whatever, but I’m sure I’ll have some extra emotions that day and some extra adrenaline,” Turnbull said from the Phillies dugout.
Just seven months away from an awkward conclusion to a drama-filled season, Turnbull has come out on the other side well. But a resurgence of emotions is inevitable as Turnbull returns to the place where he began his career.
“I was here for 10 years,” Turnbull said. “So it’s strange and bittersweet, for sure.”
He later gave more details.
“Last year was very hard,” he said. “It’s not very fun. And that’s not how I would have liked things to end here in Detroit. It wasn’t my choice for things to happen that way. “It just happened.”
Summarizing everything that happened last season becomes complicated. The Tigers attempted to pursue Turnbull in May after he had posted a 7.26 ERA in seven starts. Turnbull later told the team that he was pitching because of an injury. After an unusual exchange, the Tigers had Turnbull, who had hired Scott Boras to represent him while this unfolded, consult with additional doctors. The team ultimately agreed to rescind the option.
Turnbull waited until the end of the season to publicly state that he had broken his neck and torn ligaments around his C6 vertebrae after dodging a line drive earlier in the season against the Boston Red Sox.
“I should have talked about it,” Turnbull said on May 26, 2023. “I shouldn’t have tried to move on. “It was my fault for not saying anything about it sooner, just trying to be tough.”
A similar dilemma arose in August when the Tigers optioned Turnbull at the end of his minor league rehab assignment. Turnbull said he was pitching with a toenail avulsion. In November, Turnbull had turned to the Major League Baseball Players Association to file a complaint. The Tigers agreed to grant him a full year of service.
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A few days later, Turnbull was non-tendered by the Tigers despite what president of baseball operations Scott Harris had said at the end of the season: “We expect him to prepare as a starter this offseason and show up ready to compete for a position on our team.” rotation.”
The saga was meandering from the start and never really got better. Turnbull was unhappy at the end of the season and did himself no favors. Some fans accused him of being soft. The Tigers, in turn, lost a talented pitcher.
In the dugout on Monday, Turnbull was asked if he would change anything about how he handled the situation last season.
“I feel like I probably wouldn’t have done much differently last year,” Turnbull said. “A lot of things were out of my hands, out of my control. I didn’t really have much of a say in a lot of things that happened last year. … Everything, all the drama or whatever, a lot of negative press and stuff like that, no one knows the real story. Nobody really knows what happened. But it definitely wasn’t the twist I may have been told about. … I don’t really care too much about how that was framed and stuff and what some people might think or whatever.
“Some of that is silly. It’s not even close to the truth. But a lot of that was out of my control.”
Now away from all the chaos, Turnbull gave the feel of a bowler in a better mental space. He got married in the off-season and has a son on the way. He was waiting for a major league contract this winter and finally got one when the Phillies signed him to a one-year, $2 million deal.
“No one can predict the future, but I was confident he would get back to where he was,” Turnbull said. “It’s also incredibly valuable to land with a good team and have some success early on. I’m just trying to get back to the pitcher that I know I am, that I was before (Tommy John surgery in 2021) and all that last year. “It’s nice to be able to put it back together.”
Spencer Turnbull had a 4.55 ERA in 61 games for the Tigers from 2018 to 2023. (Jeff Curry / USA Today)
In Philadelphia, Turnbull made six starts and pitched 10 games in relief. He has a 2.63 ERA and averages 9.8 strikeouts per nine innings, looking like the type of pitcher the Tigers would love to have.
After pitching in relief starting in May, Turnbull is scheduled to start against the Tigers on Wednesday. He is taking the place of the injured Taijuan Walker. This will be Turnbull’s first outing since April 30.
“I think the most interesting thing for him is the change of role,” Hinch said from the Tigers’ dugout. “He is quite methodical in how he does his job, his pitches, his routine and his habits. “Not only staying healthy, but staying healthy in a new role has probably opened his eyes to what is possible for him.”
While a lot has changed for Turnbull (he’s pitching for a first-place team with the league’s best winning percentage), the Tigers remain stuck in a similar existence, paddling upstream in a sea of mediocrity.
But some parts of Turnbull are the same too. He remains the same eccentric, eccentric character who was once questioned for trespassing after walking onto an empty Triple-A field the night before an opener, doing visualization exercises on the mound.
The quirks also made Turnbull lovable, and on Monday in Detroit, the pitcher talked about feeling good and healthy as he makes a brief transition back to the rotation.
“Knock on wood,” he said.
Then he paused, took several steps toward a rack of batting helmets and tapped his knuckles.
“I don’t know if it’s plastic or wood,” he said.
That’s Turnbull in a nutshell. Each interaction is a miniature adventure.
It’s hard to know what things would be like if the Tigers and Turnbull had been able to mend their relationship.
But it’s interesting to see where both sides stand a year later.
“A whirlwind,” Turnbull said of last season. “Madness. But it’s also a blessing in disguise.”
(Top photo: Mitchell Leff//Keynote USA/Getty Images)
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