Debriefing him about his nearly two-month stint in Lakeland, Florida, is nothing Ty Madden can complete in five minutes.
Nor, is it easy, even in a lengthier chat, to detail all he discovered during his introductory weeks at TigerTown — a kind of baseball boot-camp for a right-handed pitcher from the University of Texas whom the Tigers paid $2.5 million after they drafted him 32nd overall in July.
Was it the 10 pounds a man 6-foot-3 added even as he decreased by 1% his body fat?
Was it the new change-up grip he was taught by Julio Teheran, the big-league old pro who was rehabbing at Lakeland this summer?
Was it the curveball Tigers manager AJ Hinch and pitching coach Chris Fetter asked him to return to his repertoire?
Madden couldn’t offer any descending list of lessons and revelations during a Friday conversation. But he did dive immediately into tales of how the pro baseball culture differed from his days at Texas, or his prep years in Cypress, Texas, just outside of Houston.
“Whereas in college, where you always had somebody looking over you — telling you when to be there, when to lift, when to throw — this was our first time on our own,” Madden said, speaking of himself and the young man who was drafted by the Tigers just ahead of him — Jackson Jobe, the prep dazzler from Oklahoma City.
“We’d show up to the park every day, have breakfast, do our soft-tissue and mobility stuff, then get ready to do all our pre-throwing stuff. Then, warm up, play catch, work out. We had meetings about breaking down some of the technology stuff.”
Here’s where the differences, for Madden, became fairly dramatic.
“We had good technology at Texas,” said a man, 21, who was the Longhorns ace during 2021, when he tossed 113.2 innings, rolling up a 2.45 ERA and 1.05 WHIP. “But here (Lakeland), you just kind of dove into it.”
What he found most enlightening was the template Tigers developers use in their postgame reports. He got a taste of how postgame feedback would spill from his farm-team starts, and even had some of his Texas starts evaluated by the Tigers’ analysts.
He was shown how a typical game from Tigers elder Matthew Boyd was appraised in all its dimensions.
“They use the same format throughout,” Madden said.
But, ah, for sure, there might have been something that most left a mark after he headed home to Cypress earlier this month to begin 4-5 months of Texas-based conditioning.
“We had an exit meeting with the whole department,” he said, “from the sports science side, to the physical trainers, to Dan Hubbs (Tigers director of pitching development and strategies), getting all the things that each department said we should work on in the offseason.
“I’ve done arm care before,” Madden said, “but that was one of the main things I took away: actual arm-strengthening and rotator-cuff strengthening — a pre-hab program.
“And that’s what it was — more like pre-hab rather than rehab. I realized I was kind of on the weaker side. So we added things to my everyday routine and I saw tremendous strides in my overall and scap (scapular) strength in six weeks.”
Adding muscle is one way in which the Tigers believe they can make Madden even more of a steal than some draft analysts believe they have in Madden, who entering July’s talent show was considered by some evaluators (MLB Pipeline) to own a Top 15 spot.
The only serious scouting knock on Madden is that he has a “downhill” plane that has made him strong in the lower end of the strike zone but vulnerable near the top. His fastball doesn’t have quite the boring spin that scouts ideally want to see in a pitcher whose heater measures in the mid-to-high-90s.
Scouts also wanted to see a change-up that matched to an appreciable degree his fastball and, particularly, his A-grade slider.
That’s what the Tigers and Madden have in mind, this offseason and beyond. They want to polish a repertoire that naturally begins with his fastball.
“It’s all about moving better, and cleaning up some mechanics,” Madden said, “so I can throw harder and longer.”
For that to happen — for Madden to be branded, officially, a starter and not a pitcher destined later for the bullpen — he must get a handle on that change-up.
It will also help if he takes to heart the conversation he had, shortly after he signed, with the authorities at Comerica Park.
“I threw a curveball my freshman and sophomore years, but didn’t throw it this year,” Madden said. “When I had my Detroit meeting with Hinch and Fetter, they wanted to bring my curveball back, because it has such a drastic change in speeds (75-79 mph).
“I’m working on it.”
And, Madden explains, he’s working on it with some help from a longtime big-league pitcher: Kip Wells, who runs Kip Wells 32, an advance pitching-performance laboratory at Houston where Madden can be found five or six days a week.
Wells’ work is blessed by the Tigers, who continue to supervise Madden’s daily routine by way of an app that each day prescribes specific exercises, drills, tasks, etc. It’s all part of a regimen geared to prepare Madden for spring camp and for what almost certainly will involve a Grapefruit League game or two ahead of Madden’s 2022 farm assignment. Madden knows it has been a long time since he last pitched in a game. In fact, it was June 25, against Mississippi State in the NCAA tournament. Madden tossed six innings, allowed four hits, a pair of runs, all while walking three and striking out eight.
A couple of weeks later, the Tigers phoned. A few days afterward, he was headed for Lakeland. But because of all those innings, particularly after a year layoff due to COVID, the Tigers never intended for Madden to throw in a 2021 game.
That can’t happen soon enough — for two parties.
“It already seems like it’s been a long time,” he said, talking about throwing against game hitters. “It was good to be able to slow down a little bit and focus on my mechanics. Not that you lose those things. But it’s nice to have time to focus on yourself.”
Nothing wrong with that mission, say the Tigers, who are focusing on Madden bringing some muscle, soon, to a rotation in Detroit.
Lynn Henning is a freelance writer and former Detroit News sports reporter.