Should You Hold or Drop Spencer Torkelson? Expert Analysis

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00:00 (upbeat music)

00:03 - And we were, I was on the fence about this player

00:05 and you were actually adamant with your decisions.

00:07 Let's start there.

00:08 Hold or drop Spencer Torkelson.

00:10 - Well, look, it's, let me preface this.

00:14 You're in a 10 team league, it's okay.

00:17 You can drop him.

00:18 - You're in a four team league.

00:19 - You're in a four team, but context matters, right?

00:23 Like if you're, replacement value in a 10 team league

00:26 is very different in a 15 team league.

00:28 So Torkelson in a 12 team mixed league

00:30 is where we're really talking about Torkelson here.

00:32 - Correct.

00:33 - Like you could have already dropped Torkelson,

00:34 it's fine, I moved on from him.

00:35 But the thing to remember with Torkelson is this,

00:37 he pretty much did the same thing

00:39 for the first few weeks of the season last year

00:41 that he's doing this year.

00:42 So just to kind of bring that perspective,

00:44 I know he has zero home runs,

00:46 I understand he's at 218, I get it.

00:48 But if you go back and dial it back to April of 2023,

00:52 well, he had 206 in April of 2023.

00:55 19 of his 31 homers came after the all-star break, okay?

00:59 That's less than 81 games.

01:01 So I guess the point I'm making is,

01:04 we're a 24 year old guy.

01:06 I don't know if I'm ready to completely just say,

01:08 yeah, I'm gonna drop him to the wafer wire.

01:11 I think it might be fine to bench him, sure,

01:13 'cause he's killing your team, I get that.

01:15 But if you look at, some guys are very slow starters.

01:18 I remember Mark Teixeira historically every single year,

01:21 you could buy him in April,

01:22 'cause every single year he was terrible in April,

01:24 and then he was brilliant the rest of the way.

01:25 Now I'm not saying he's Mark Teixeira.

01:27 What I am saying is some guys have a pattern.

01:29 Julio Rodriguez has a pattern,

01:30 we've talked about it here on the show too.

01:32 Torkelson, still very young,

01:34 a guy that I don't see the Tigers going,

01:38 "Well, we're gonna send him back down,"

01:39 'cause that's not gonna really do much here for Torkelson

01:42 at this point in his career.

01:43 There's no one there to replace him.

01:44 The Tigers are not a team

01:45 that is a realistic contender this year.

01:48 So he's gonna work his way through it.

01:49 So I don't think he's in danger of losing his job.

01:51 It's not like a Jose Abreu situation,

01:53 who's an older veteran.

01:54 He's 24, they have a ton invested in him,

01:57 the draft capital they used to take him.

01:59 Maybe they rushed him developmentally a little bit.

02:01 Maybe he's not gonna be the player we thought he could be.

02:04 But regardless, to drop a guy that we know last year,

02:08 turned things around in big fashion,

02:10 and has a 30 home run ceiling,

02:12 I don't know if those are the kind of guys

02:13 we wanna drop to the waiver wire.

02:14 So again, in a 10-team league, I totally get it.

02:16 You wanna drop him for jerks and profile

02:18 because you're getting your butt kicked in the standings?

02:20 Okay, cool.

02:21 But at this point, I think in those 12-team mixers,

02:25 you're better off holding him.

02:26 Or even more intriguing, take him in a deal,

02:29 potentially somewhere else, as part of a package.

02:32 Take this little piece back and see what happens

02:33 over the next four or five weeks.

02:35 Another guy too, Matt, to talk about is Nolan Gorman.

02:37 Now this is one of your St. Louis Cardinals.

02:40 Now Nolan Gorman, on the other hand,

02:41 to me, there's guys on this 40-man roster

02:43 that could take his job.

02:44 To me, there's guys where I look at a guy

02:46 who's hitting under 200, who isn't all or nothing,

02:48 hitting a hitter.

02:49 I was never a big Nolan Gorman guy.

02:50 You know this, we've talked about it a million times.

02:52 Too much swing and miss for me.

02:54 Nolan Gorman is a guy that I feel comfortable

02:56 dropping and moving on from.

02:57 'Cause I think at some point,

02:58 the Cardinals might just do the same thing.

03:00 What's your take on Gorman right now?

03:02 Do you hold or drop?

03:03 - It's a drop for me in a short answer.

03:06 There's just too many moving pieces there in St. Louis.

03:09 It's just been uncharacteristically bad last season

03:12 and now this season.

03:13 So something has to change.

03:15 So yeah, I can definitely see that drop.

03:17 (upbeat music)

03:19 [MUSIC]

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