Saturday night was supposed to be about Tarik Skubal, at least from a Tigers fans\u2019 perspective. The best pitcher in baseball had a perfectly fine short outing for Team USA against Team Britain, but it was southpaw Enmanuel de Jesus who put on a show. Taking on Team Israel, which does feature a few major league caliber hitters, the southpaw struck out seven of the first 14 hitters he saw in perfect fashion. A triple and a single in the fifth allowed a run before de Jesus punched out his eighth hitter of the night to wrap up five stellar innings. Team Venezuela went on to win 11-3 on homers from Eugenio Suarez and a pair of blasts from Luiz Arraez.<\/p>\n
Granted, outside of Harrison Bader, Team Israel is composed of Triple-A caliber hitters. But considering how well de Jesus has pitched all spring, it wasn\u2019t surprising to see him absolutely dominate in the spotlight. His fourseam and sinker command was outstanding, and he was working cutters and changeups just off the edges with a lot of precision. It reminded me of watching prime Jose Quintana out there.<\/p>\n
De Jesus has 6 1\/3 scoreless innings for the Tigers already in Grapefruit League play with an excellent strikeout to walk ratio. He signed a minor league deal worth a potential $1.3M if he makes the Tigers\u2019 major league roster this offseason. After pitching well in the KBO the past few seasons, the lefty\u2019s command of his 93-94 mph fourseam-sinker combination, cutter, and changeup, have all looked very good so far. It\u2019s not the kind of arsenal that screams frontline MLB starter, but as long as his command is this good, it\u2019s going to be hard to keep him off the Opening Day roster with a straight face.<\/p>\n
The Tigers might prefer to keep him stretched out, but with Keider Montero and Ty Madden already optioned to minor league camp, there\u2019s really no need. We also don\u2019t know the specifics of de Jesus\u2019s minor league contract. If he has an opt-out date if not called up to the major leagues, the Tigers are probably best served by taking him on Opening Day and optioning Brant Hurter. Let\u2019s just say that Hurter needs to get it going in a real hurry or he\u2019ll be tuning up with the Toledo Mud Hens while de Jesus occupies the longman\/lefty role in the Tigers\u2019 bullpen.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easier to pitch well early in camp before the major league hitters are ramped up and clicking on all cylinders, but just watching the stuff and command, it\u2019s obvious this isn\u2019t just a fluke run. De Jesus pitched very well and really learned his craft overseas, and it looks like the Tigers are set to benefit so far this spring.<\/p>\n
As for Skubal, he was only scheduled to throw 55 pitches or so, as he\u2019s put his emphasis on preparing for the regular season. He surrendered a first pitch home run to Red Sox infielder Nate Eaton before getting into full Skubal mode and punching out five hitters in three innings of work. Team USA leads 7-1 in the seventh inning as of this writing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saturday night was supposed to be about Tarik Skubal, at least from a Tigers fans\u2019 perspective. The best…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2386],"tags":[5,147,53,3536,2583,4,594],"class_list":{"0":"post-612841","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-tigers","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-detroit","10":"tag-detroit-tigers","11":"tag-detroit-tigers-news","12":"tag-detroittigers","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-tigers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116191867951473537","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}