About the only thing better Thursday than Jackson’s Jobe’s numbers after his first start for Single-A Lakeland was Jackson Jobe’s disposition.
“Man, I’m good, I’m really good,” Jobe, who is 20 years old and a right-handed starter of note on the Tigers farm, said during a Saturday phone conversation. “It just feels great to be back out there, to be part of the team.
“Obviously, rehab is not a place to be, and that was my first go-around there. Hopefully, I learned enough not to ever be back there.
“But things happen.”
Oh, do they happen, as they did Thursday when Jobe got his first Single-A start of the season against the Bradenton Marauders at Publix Field/Marchant Stadium on the TigerTown campus at Lakeland, Florida.
Jobe was allowed a 2.2-inning ration. He threw 46 pitches, 31 for strikes. He allowed three hits and zero runs. He walked none, and struck out five, which is what happens when Statcast reveals your four-seam fastball is running 97-98, as it was Thursday, and your slider (91-92) and curveball (81-82) are matching nicely with your change-up (87-88).
Also, when the spin-rates are gold-star good: 2,548 with his four-seamer, 3,185 on his slider and 3,108 when he spun his curve.
“He looked really good,” said Andrew Graham, the Lakeland manager who has reunited with Jobe in 2023. “Obviously, I had him for more than half the season last year, and his fastball is looking more electric than even a year ago.
“And he’s got a cutter-slash-slider he developed that really played well (Thursday) for multiple punchouts.”
As for that “things happen” philosophy Jobe has adopted, yes, they happen also when you are throwing a routine March bullpen session at TigerTown, your third of the spring, and suddenly your 2023 plans change. Frighteningly.
“Honestly, it just came out of nowhere,” Jobe recalled of the lower-back ills that had left him on the sidelines until last week. “I just felt something sharp in my back on one of my pitches.
“I tried to fight through it the rest of my bullpen, just figuring it was muscle tightness or whatever. I didn’t think it was too serious. But I got it checked out, and I was pretty bummed.”
The diagnosis was “lumbar spine inflammation,” which aren’t the words a pitcher, or a fan base, care to hear when much of the Tigers’ future stands to be affected by a man taken third overall in the 2021 MLB Draft.
Doctors said Jobe would miss 3-6 months — with anything close to the latter figure meaning Jobe could be gone for the entire 2023 season. And who knew what prognosis lay ahead for a pitcher so young suddenly confronting his first serious medical issue?
“It was kind of interesting,” Jobe said, preferring “interesting” to, perhaps, terrifying. “I just wanted to get back as soon as I could.”
So, he got to work, at the Tigers’ rehab/training center in Lakeland working alongside Corey Tremble, who heads the Tigers’ training corps. Six days a week, he would be at the field and complex at 9 a.m., prepared for a morning spent strengthening core muscles.
He would break for lunch, often times joining other pitchers who were rehabbing at Lakeland: Beau Brieske, Dylan Smith, Max Green, Tanner Kohlhepp. Then, back to the complex for a few more hours on the same regimen.
“When they said it could be three months — or longer — I just said I was going to do everything I could do to get back in three months, or sooner,” Jobe said. “I was going to beat the odds.”
In fact, he did just that. It was about the seven-week mark, he estimates, in early May, when he began picking up a baseball and doing some light tossing, all under supervision.
“We took things really slow,” Jobe said. “Your back is not something you want to mess around with. I just had to build some strengths to protect my back, which I was able to do because they gave me a great program. They did a great job, and I executed the plan they wanted.”
Jobe still isn’t sure how his lower-lumbar situation developed. But it’s not a new phenomenon in the realm of sports medicine. Gymnasts tend to be hit with it, perhaps, more than any species of athlete. Wrestlers, also.
Jobe understands something aggravated his lower back, which surprises him only in that his offseason training was, in his mind, five-star. He worked out religiously and followed to the smallest detail the Tigers’ script. He added five pounds of muscle and now weighs 215 pounds, nicely distributed across his 6-foot-2 frame.
The pitch metrics from last week imply a 20-year-old clearly is getting stronger and maybe moving closer, even in a year, to Detroit.
That, after all, was always a quiet expectation both with the Tigers and with Jobe. He pitched last season at Lakeland and then had a strong three-game taste of high-A ball at West Michigan (three starts, 1.15 ERA, 0.96 WHIP), which put him in line for a trip at some point in 2023 to Double-A Erie.
Timetables since have changed. How much is difficult to say, at least precisely. Jobe will stay in Lakeland until the Tigers are sure all is well — physically and competitively. A return trip to West Michigan, probably quickly, is in the cards.
Is it absurd to think Erie might yet be on his 2023 itinerary? Probably, when Jobe’s season is beginning at the farm’s halfway mark and when the Tigers under new front-office boss Scott Harris prefer that players move more slowly up the farm-chain.
That’s particularly the case when another 2023 option exists: The Arizona Fall League. Innings lost during April and May could easily get a boost from the AFL’s games in October and November.
Jobe isn’t rushing. He appreciates the way 2023 is going after an early scare that jolted a young man who had never had a setback. He understands fans might be feeling better, as well, after a March medical report that so many viewed as ominous.
That was especially true for those not inclined to forgive the Tigers for drafting Jobe ahead of California prep shortstop Marcelo Mayer, a celebrity talent the Tigers fandom two years ago was wild about. He now plays Double-A ball for the Red Sox.
Jobe knows all about the fan chatter.
“I’d be lying if I said it did bother me,” Jobe said. “I’ve been pretty confident in the work I’ve put in. Sure, I’d have rather been pitching than being in rehab, but it’s one of those things you have to deal with.
“I’m gonna have a long career. I don’t think that whatever was supposed to happen at Double A this year is the end-all or be-all. My goal is to get to Detroit. I’m just gonna follow the plan and stay in my lane.”
Getting to Comerica Park calls for advancements on the psychological side as well as the physical, Jobe understands.
He has been making plans accordingly.
“I think the biggest thing right now for me, from a pitching standpoint, is just being aggressive, trusting myself. On paper, obviously, my stuff’s pretty good. But I’ve got to attack hitters, get ahead, and then finish them off. It’s much different when a guy is getting ahead and not fighting back, so that’s probably my main objective.”
Pretty good, this sense of where he’s at in June. Especially when compared with what lay ahead when he got his mid-March news.
“I feel like I’m a lot stronger now, that I’m a different person, physically,” Jobe said. “So, maybe there were some positives.”
His manager saw them last week, those positives. The Statcast data attested to them, as well.
Now, he’ll get busy with the 2023 season. And lend an occasional, thought, for sure, to that grand plan the Tigers have in mind, as well.
Lynn Henning is a freelance writer and retired Detroit News sports reporter.