REID DETMERS IS COMING.
Reid Detmers delivers a fastball (Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports)
ANAHEIM, CA.-- Reid Detmers put together another quality start against the Cubs Thursday Night lasting 5.2 innings and striking out 8 en route to his first win of 2023. This was the good side of Detmers, who Angels fans have become all too familiar with posting up and down results on a start-to-start basis. Selected 10th overall in the 2020 MLB Draft after a dominant career at the Univerity of Louisville cut short by the pandemic, Detmers made his debut with the big league club in 2021 with only 62 professional innings under his belt. The results weren’t pretty, as evidenced by a 7.40 ERA and an 11.9 H/9 clip that put his 2022 roster spot in jeopardy. A strong spring training was enough for the Angels to add him to their rotation as their sixth starter to begin the season. On May 11, Detmers completed the 12th No-Hitter in Angels history, striking out just two Tampa Bay Rays (the lowest since Liriano’s two in 2011) hitters on 108 pitches. That game was great, but it wasn’t the turning point in Detmers's career, as he was optioned to AAA just six starts later after failing to build off of that performance.
The 2023 version of Reid Detmers is far more powerful. The 4-Seamer has jumped to sitting about 95mph compared to 93mph in his Rookie season (FanGraphs), and the slider sitting about 90mph compared to 86mph in ‘21. The 23-year-old is slowly developing into a power lefty and it's showing in his strikeout totals. His 2023 strikeout rate has jumped to 27%, up from 22% in 2022 and 18% in 2021. The peripheral numbers are improving dramatically, but he has yet to put it all together. Detmers has posted a 4.79 ERA through 11 starts for an Angels team that really needs a guy to lock things down in the rotation. However, this guy is nearly 24 years old and going on year THREE as a big-league pitcher. You can talk about his mediocre career numbers all you want, but the leash he’s been given in the infant stages of his career has set him up to eventually become the anchor the Angels hope he can grow into. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.
Let’s revisit his May 19th start against the Minnesota Twins. Detmers recorded 17 outs, 12 of them via the punchout while allowing three runs on two hits. He entered the 6th inning with another No-Hitter intact and struck out the first two batters of the inning before allowing the next three batters to reach base. He was yanked after 105 pitches and Reliever Jimmy Herget allowed two of his inherited runners to score. The final line: 5.2 IP, 2 H, 3 ER, 12 K. Something was clearly working. Detmers topped 96 on his fastball that night, but only generated 7 swings and misses on it, whereas his slider generated a whopping 17 whiffs. The arsenal is developing before our very eyes, and it’s not necessarily because of the increase in fastball velocity. The heavier fastball sets up that wipeout slider and gives him the strikeout stuff. The problem? He doesn’t throw it over the plate enough to reach that upper echelon that the Angels hope he can get to. 105 pitches on 63 strikes is not elite at the MLB level and he’ll need to get more efficient in order to survive– but he is only 23.
While we’ve highlighted the increased strikeout rate and other power-pitching metrics, we also know that Detmers has another side to his game. While it hasn’t exactly happened yet, he’s flashed the ability to not only get into games by going out and getting strikeouts but also pitching to contact. In 2023, hitters are only barreling Detmers up 4% of the time. That puts him in the 86th percentile which is in the same neighborhood as Josh Hader, Nathan Eovaldi, and Max Fried according to Baseball Savant. In other words, he is an elite pitch-to-contact guy when he actually throws strikes.
At 23 years old (24 in July, Detmers is flashing signs of brilliance. He has one of the prettiest curveballs in baseball and is throwing harder year in and year out. The challenge is him converging the Jekyll and Hyde components of his game. There will be a day when it clicks for him. When he’s able to differentiate between when he needs to go for the punchout, and try and get a guy out or on base in three or fewer pitches. When you start to see him string together a few starts of 7+ innings with high strikeout numbers, that’ll be your sign. If he was a stock, invest. If you play fantasy baseball, stash him on your bench. Reid Detmers is coming, and he’s going to be around for a very long time.
