Well, we tried to keep the Jackson Jobe hype low key this spring, but he just won’t let us. The top pitching prospect in baseball stepped to the mound for the first time in a Detroit Tigers uniform on Tuesday, tasked with holding a 1-0 lead in the ninth inning of a Grapefruit League contest with the Minnesota Twins. Let’s just say the Twins got a look at the future, and they did not like what they saw.
Jobe proceeded to unleash the most explosive sequence of pitches seen from a Tigers pitcher since pre-2014 Justin Verlander. And even Verlander didn’t have this cutter or changeup.
It had already been a good day for Tigers pitching, with Kenta Maeda and Alex Faedo posting great outings to go with Beau Brieske’s quality effort in relief. Jobe erased the whole game from memory by unleashing a storm of filth including fourseam fastballs that climbed into triple digits and topped out at a whopping 101.8 mph.
The first hitter was right-hander Jake Rucker, who got a pair of fastballs in at 99 and 98 mph inside on his hands for balls, before taking a 95 mph cutter for a strike and then grounding out on a mid-80’s sweeper.
Right-handed hitter Dylan Neuse was next. He whiffed at a sweeper down and away for strike one, and then whiffed on a 100.6 mph heater. Jobe reached back for 101.8 mph on the next fastball, which missed up. A pair of right-on-right changeups followed, one ball and one strike, before Jobe again dialed up 100.6 and spotted it right at the bottom of the zone for strike three.
Jobe finished things off by starting Willie Joe Garry Jr. off with a 96 mph cutter down and in for a strike. He then unleashed a pair of fantastic 86 mph changeups for whiffs that put Garry away and earned Jobe the save. Now sure, the competition wasn’t much better than Arizona Fall League caliber, but the stuff was just outrageous and fairly well commanded too.
Here’s the whole inning courtesy of Tigers Minor League Report.
Last September, as Jobe was torching hitters in High-A ball, in a moment of clarity I realized that there wasn’t a better pitching prospect in baseball and made this pronouncement on Twitter. There was plenty of skepticism of this claim, but prospect writers have been coming around to that opinion all winter. The work Jobe has done this spring is just confirmation, and you’re rapidly going to see this become the de facto position of the game’s prospect experts. Paul Skenes is outstanding and more experienced, but he doesn’t do anything better than Jobe, and his stuff doesn’t quite measure up either.
Jobe made the case himself on Tuesday in his first game action in a Tigers uniform. We may not be waiting too long for the next one.
One of the first and hottest of the takes I saw was that if this was spring training 2006 and Jim Leyland and Dave Dombrowski were still running the organization, that Jobe wouldn’t spend another minute as a minor leaguer.
That’s quite likely true, but it’s also just a little bit too hot. We have to remember that Justin Verlander was a year older with a lot more experience and workload built up through his college years. By comparison, Jobe threw only 80 innings last year in his age 21 season. Those differences matter and we’ll get to what they mean for Jobe’s immediate future in a moment.
On the other hand, other than maybe Spencer Strider or Gerrit Cole, no starting pitcher has better stuff than this. Jobe’s command is already major league caliber, and while it should continue to improve, and needs to for him to hit his ceiling as one of the game’s best pitchers, he’s capable of pitching in the major leagues right now.
You can’t waste this caliber of pitching on minor league hitters for very long. With a hitter, you can stash them longer until a time of your choosing. Because pitchers are so volatile, and injury always possibility from pitch to pitch, when a young pitcher is ready for the major leagues, you have to use them when they’re ready, rather than when it might fit better into the front office’s optimal plans.
Jobe is going to have some workload restrictions this season, and that complicates the situation a little bit. The Tigers would no doubt like to get him to around 130 innings for the season, and they would probably prefer that as many of those innings as possible come in Detroit, assuming they’re really serious about winning this year. That means keeping his outings short in the early going. It doesn’t really matter if he’s pitching at Double-A or Triple-A, because no one is going to do anything against him either way unless he’s making big mistakes in location. In the minor leagues, Jobe will mainly be in competition with himself, looking to develop more consistency and precision.
The Tigers will need to slow play Jobe early on. My guess, is that this means starting him in Double-A and limiting his outings to about 60-75 pitches pitches and say, four or five innings per start. Eight or nine starts like that would get him to 40-45 innings of work by the end of May. At that point, if Jobe is pitching like this, it’s going to be time for a call-up no matter which level he’s getting his work in at that point. The Tigers can skip him a few times if need be, using the All-Star break to give him extra rest, and that, along with closely monitoring his fatigue levels, is about all you can do. You can’t waste this on minor league hitters much longer than that.
Jackson Jobe probably isn’t just going to pump triple digits as a starter, but the easy armspeed and immaculate mechanics say he’s going to have it in his back pocket whenever he wants it. 96-98 mph with the outstanding ride he’s getting on the fourseamer will do just fine most of the time. The low-to-mid-90’s cutter is a terrifying pitch for lefties in particular, and then Jobe backs those with a 70 grade sweeping slider and changeup. His command is already pretty good, as evidenced by his miniscule walk rate down the stretch last summer, and so he just needs to continue sharpening the ample set of tools he already possesses.
There is still a little more work ahead, but Jackson Jobe made a statement on Tuesday. He’s not going to be denied much longer, and the Tigers would be fools to waste him in the minor leagues beyond what it will take to keep his innings under control while still allowing him to develop his game a little more. Whether that forces them to trade a pitcher or alter their plans with someone like Jack Flaherty is irrelevant.
Jackson Jobe is priority one and he’s on his way to beating the door down.