LAKELAND, Fla. — Now, this was different.
Kind of like watching a baseball game with double vision.
A pitching machine set up on a backfield at TigerTown shot out two balls at nearly the same moment — one right after the other — and Detroit Tigers prospect Spencer Torkelson was in the batter’s box.
Torkelson moved on the first ball, waited for a split second and whacked the second into the outfield.
“It’s like sitting fastball and adjusting to the curve,” Torkelson said. “I have never done it before.”
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“It’s a timing thing,” infielder Ryan Kreidler said. “It’s just a different look. It was super challenging. You just had to get over the fact that your eyes are telling you to do one thing, but you know you’re trying to do another thing. … We’ve never done that before. The coaches hadn’t even done it before.”
The Tigers unveiled several new hitting stations Sunday morning during minor-league minicamp. Some of the drills were set up to improve specific baseball skills like hand-eye coordination and the ability to recognize a certain pitch.
But in the big picture, they were meant to keep everything fresh and different because a minicamp can get boring without real competition.
“I think it was good for us,” outfielder Parker Meadows said. “They threw a couple new drills at us that I’ve never seen out here.”
In another drill, Torkelson bunted.
Ugh. Not a sight we want to see.
On the next pitch, he faked a bunt and then slashed the pitch, like something you would see in fast-pitch softball.
Torkelson, of course, had no problem with the drill, mashing a ball into right field. Everybody in his group screamed — they had turned it into a competition.
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A horn went off, thanks to director of coaching Ryan Sienko, and the groups rotated to a new field with a new objective.
Another station was set up to measure exit velocity.
As outfielder Jose De La Cruz was batting, a coach read off his exit velocities: 108 mph, 102 and 99.
De La Cruz looked happy.
“We were trying to hit it 95 mph or higher at a five to 25 (degree) launch angle, trying to just get it at the right speed at the right launch,” Kreidler said. “We were getting feedback from the coaches on if we did it right or not.”
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But the most telling drill was the one that seemed like the most real life situation.
On the back corner field, minor-league hitting coordinator Jeff Branson was throwing two-seam and four-seam fastballs from behind an L-screen.
The players had to recognize the pitch and read the seams, swinging only at four-seamers or only at two-seamers, depending on the round.
“I liked it when there’s a coach throwing,” outfielder Jacob Robson said. “If he throws a four-seam fastball, you have to swing. If it’s a two-seam fastball, you take even if it’s right down the middle. So you just got to really focus on the seams of the ball.”
Then again, Robson has never loved hitting off a machine.
“I’m not anti-machine,” he said. “But I like when the balls coming out of someone’s hand. That helps me a lot.”
Kreidler found value in this drill, too.
“It’s not necessarily like, if I’m in a game, I’m not going to take a two-seam if I’m looking for a fastball,” Kreidler said. “But it’s the idea of tracking and making a decision off an arm as opposed to a machine.”
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Near the bullpens, the position players used a HECOstix to improve their hand-eye coordination, reaction speed and cognitive development.
“Just a cognitive skill and vision training,” Kreidler said. “It was challenging and competitive. We’ve done variations of those different vision drills in the past. That was probably the best one that we’ve done.”
Contact Evan Petzold at epetzold@freepress.com or follow him on Twitter @EvanPetzold. Read more on the Detroit Tigers and sign up for our Tigers newsletter.