Regardless of how quickly or slowly a player moved up the Minor League ranks, making the leap to The Show always comes with a learning curve. Reid Detmers is dealing with this in a significant way as he adjusts to life with the Los Angeles Angels.
Detmers made just 12 starts at the Double-A level and one start at Triple-A before the Angels called him up, and his inexperience has shown in his first four starts.
He put together one excellent outing against the Houston Astros, but has given up 14 earned runs in 13 innings during his other three starts. Against the Cleveland Indians on Saturday, the long ball was again an issue, as a three-run home run by Jose Ramirez was all that needed to happen to hand Detmers his third loss of the season.
Despite that, the young Angels starter is not too concerned. He knows that he still has plenty of time to learn the game and become a consistent quality starter, according to Rhett Bollinger of MLB.com:
“There’s a lot of learning,” Detmers said. “I’ve only made four starts up here, so a lot of room left. I’m just gonna go out there and be myself, not gonna worry about anything too much besides just working on stuff I know I can fix. Other than that, just go out there and compete. At the end of the day, that’s all you can do.”
Joe Maddon took Detmers out after just 70 pitches over 3.2 innings of work, justifying this by saying that Detmers had nothing to improve upon by staying in longer.
“He just didn’t have his best stuff from the beginning,” Maddon said. “I liked the slider today. He put a couple of his changeups in play. His velocity wasn’t heavy. His curveball was just OK. He has a better one than that. He just really didn’t have his better stuff. There was no reason to stretch it at that point. He was at 70 pitches. We were in that part of the game where he had nothing to gain.”
Even the most reliable starters have days where they simply don’t have their best stuff. For Detmers — who just turned 22 in July — there is even less reason to be worried about a couple of bad starts.
On a positive note, Detmers was able to work himself out of a bases loaded jam in the first inning and accumulated 15 swings and misses during his 70 pitches. As far as glimpses of hope go, there’s still plenty to like about the 2020 first round pick.
Jose Marte shines in MLB debut
After being acquired by the Angels from the San Francisco Giants in the Tony Watson trade, Jose Marte made his MLB debut on Friday. There, he put himself squarely in the team’s future bullpen plans.
Marte threw two innings of no-run, one-hit baseball, striking out four in the process. His fastball reached 98 mph, showing the powerful pitcher he can be at the big league level.