One of the biggest storylines of the offseason was the Detroit Tigers and their insistence that they didn’t need to add an established closer to their roster. Incumbent Jose Valverde had imploded during the Tigers’ run to the AL Pennant in 2012 and his contract had expired at the conclusion of the season. Instead of spending big on a ninth inning stopper, Tigers GM Dave Dombrowski rebuked the overtures of super agent Scott Boras and sat on the sidelines while Rafael Soriano found a home in Washington.
The answer, they maintained, would likely come from within, in the form of 22-year-old right hander Bruce Rondon. Rondon may not have been annointed the closer walking into Major League Spring Training in Lakeland, Florida back in February, but he certainly knew the job was his to lose.
But lose it, he did.
Rondon features a fastball routinely clocked in the triple digits, but the Tigers maintain he’s more than a one-trick pony. He offers a splitter than shows good downward action and began to develop a slider during camp with Detroit last month. Both his off-speed offerings need a bit of work, but both are made more effective by the sheer velocity of his heater. When the hitter has to gear up for 100, it’s a little tougher to stay back on a slider coming in a dozen miles per hour slower.
Unfortunately, while Rondon did show off his strikeout prowess in Lakeland, he also showed off his propensity to allow a few too many walks; a problem he had largely harnessed during a stellar 2012 campaign.
Rondon was the Tigers Minor League Pitcher of the Year last season and came in as the number 107 prospect in baseball in the pre-season rankings on this site. He took a step forward when he posted the lowest walk rate of his professional career last season; allowing just 4.4 per nine innings. Yes, I said “just” 4.4 per nine. For a guy who had walked an abysmal 34 batters in just 40 innings at Low-A West Michigan in 2011, seeing such a sharp decline in walk percentage spread across three levels in 2012 was more than promising. After all, despite all the walks, Rondon was having no trouble limiting baserunners. In fact, in three years since coming State-side, Rondon had never allowed more than 5.4 hits per nine innings in a season and had only allowed five home runs in nearly 200 innings of Minor League work.
By all accounts, the Tigers gave serious consideration to bringing the hefty right hander to the big leagues to bolster their bullpen during the stretch run last year. This is a guy who has been developed as a closer and the organization thinks he has the mental makeup for the role at the big league level.
Unfortunately for him, the Grapefruit League was anything but kind to the Venezualan-born Rondon. From the beginning of camp games, Rondon struggled with control of his arsenal. He fell victim to walks, sure, but he also found himself pitching from behind far too often. Tigers manager Jim Leyland made sure to use his young hurler early enough in games that he saw plenty of big league competition and Rondon soon discovered that plate discipline was a bit more developed with established Major Leaguers. He still flashed his overpowering stuff, as evidenced by the 19 strikeouts Rondon racked up in his 12.1 innings of work. What the Tigers couldn’t live with, however, was the lethal combination of the nine walks he allowed coupled with the 17 hits, including two that left the yard.
The hard-thrower was optioned out to Triple-A Toledo as camp came to a close and the Tigers will bide their time using a committee to close games while Rondon gets a tune-up with Mud Hens pitching coach A.J. Sager. The Tigers will want to see better command of the strikezone from their top pitching prospect and the first real taste of the International League should present Rondon an opportunity to make adjustments to more advanced hitters. Rondon worked in nine games with Toledo at the tail-end of 2012 and wound up walking seven in just eight innings while fanning nine.
The Tigers have shown they can live with a higher-than-you-might-like walk rate out of a reliever, even one they use in the ninth inning. What they can’t live with is a closer who puts himself in hitters counts and routinely pitches in traffic during the ninth inning. If they were okay with that formula, they would have simply named Al Alburquerque their closer long ago and moved on. In order for Rondon to make an impact in Detroit’s bullpen in 2013, he’ll first need to display an ability to adjust to the more advanced league with Toledo and learn to carry those adjustments into the big league bullpen.
That Rondon begins the season in Triple-A is should be anything but a disappointment for Tigers fans. Detroit has a history of aggressivley pushing their best young arms and have gotten no better than mixed results from their efforts. Allowing Rondon some extra time to develop, even if it’s only a couple of months, will not only delay the arbitration clock, but should present a more polished pitcher to the big club when he does make his debut.
He has the stuff to succeed. After watching him during camp, I have no doubts about Rondon’s repertoire. Both the slider and the splitter looked great at times and have the potential to be very solid secondary offerings. They key with this guy, like a lot of flame-throwers, is whether or not he can harness the strikezone and be consistent with his delivery. When he can show the ability to do that, he’ll make the short drive up I-75 and into the Detroit bullpen.