DETROIT — It was strange to see Spencer Turnbull at Comerica Park on Monday. The red-headed pitcher who was drafted by the Detroit Tigers and debuted with the Tigers and threw a no-hitter with the Tigers stood on the dirt and held lengthy chats with pitching coach Chris Fetter and manager A.J. Hinch.
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He hugged a team employee and chatted up old teammates. He circled behind home plate and signed autographs for fans clad in Olde English D attire.
Turnbull did all this wearing a red-and-blue cap, now a member of the Philadelphia Phillies scheduled to pitch against his old team Wednesday.
“I don’t want to give too much credit to ‘revenge tour’ or whatever, but I’m sure I’ll have some extra emotions that day and some extra adrenaline,” Turnbull said from the Phillies’ dugout.
Only seven months removed from an uneasy conclusion to a season filled with drama, Turnbull has come out on the other side OK. But the resurfacing of emotions is unavoidable as Turnbull returns to the place where his career began.
“I was here for 10 years,” Turnbull said. “So it’s weird and bittersweet, for sure.”
He later elaborated.
”Last year was really hard,” he said. “Not a lot of fun. And it wasn’t how I would have liked things to end here in Detroit. It wasn’t my choice for things to go down that way. It just kind of happened.”
Recapping all that occurred last season gets convoluted. The Tigers tried to option Turnbull in May after he had posted a 7.26 ERA in seven starts. Turnbull then told the team he was pitching through an injury. After an unusual back-and-forth, the Tigers had Turnbull — who had hired Scott Boras to represent him as this unfolded — see additional doctors. The team eventually agreed to rescind the option.
Turnbull waited until the end of the season to publicly state he had fractured his neck and torn ligaments around his C6 vertebrae after dodging a line drive earlier in the season against the Boston Red Sox.
“I should have spoken up about it,” Turnbull said on May 26, 2023. “I shouldn’t have tried to play through it. That was on me for not saying something about it sooner, just trying to be tough.”
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A similar dilemma arose in August when the Tigers optioned Turnbull at the end of his minor-league rehab assignment. Turnbull said he was pitching with a toenail avulsion. By November, Turnbull had turned to the Major League Baseball Players Association to file a grievance. The Tigers agreed to grant him a full year of service time.
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A few days later, the Tigers non-tendered Turnbull despite what president of baseball operations Scott Harris had said at the end of the season: “We expect him to prepare as a starter this offseason and show up ready to compete for a job in our rotation.”
The saga was winding from the start and never really improved. Turnbull was disgruntled by the end of the season and did himself no favors. Some fans accused him of being soft. The Tigers in turn lost a talented pitcher.
Monday in the dugout, Turnbull was asked whether he would change anything about how he handled the situation last season.
“I feel like there’s probably not much (I would have done) different last year,” Turnbull said. “A lot of things were out of my hands, out of my control. Didn’t really have a lot of say in a lot of stuff that went down last year. … Everything, all the drama or whatever it was, a lot of the negative press and things like that, nobody knows the real story. No one knows, really, what happened. But it was definitely not the spin that was maybe told on me. … I don’t really care too much about how that was framed and stuff and what some people may think or whatever.
“Some of that is dumb. It’s not even close to the truth. But a lot of that was out of my control.”
Now removed from all the chaos, Turnbull gave the vibe of a pitcher in a better headspace. He got married in the offseason and has a child on the way. He held out for a major-league deal this winter and finally got one when the Phillies signed him to a one-year, $2 million contract.
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“No one can predict the future, but I had confidence I would get back to where I was,” Turnbull said. “It’s also incredibly validating to land with a good team and have some success early. I’m just trying to get back to the pitcher I know that I am, that I was before (Tommy John surgery in 2021) and all the stuff last year. Just nice being able to kind of put it back together.”
In Philadelphia, Turnbull has made six starts and pitched 10 games in relief. He has a 2.63 ERA and averages 9.8 strikeouts per nine innings, looking like the type of pitcher the Tigers would love to have.
After pitching in relief beginning in May, Turnbull is slated to start against the Tigers on Wednesday. He is taking the spot of the injured Taijuan Walker. This will be Turnbull’s first start since April 30.
“I think the thing that’s been the most interesting for him is the change in role,” Hinch said from the Tigers’ dugout. “He’s pretty methodical in how he goes about his work and his throwing and his routine and his habits. Not only staying healthy but staying healthy in a new role has probably opened his own eyes as to what’s possible for him.”
Though much has changed for Turnbull — he is pitching for a first-place team with the league’s best winning percentage — the Tigers remain mired in a similar existence, paddling upstream in a sea of mediocrity.
But parts of Turnbull are the same, too. He is still the same wacky, eccentric character who was once questioned for trespassing after walking onto an empty Triple-A field the night before a start, doing visualization exercises on the mound.
The quirks also made Turnbull loveable, and Monday in Detroit, the pitcher talked of feeling good and healthy as he makes a brief transition back into the rotation.
“Knock on wood,” he said.
Then he paused, took several steps over to a rack of batting helmets and tapped his knuckles.
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“I don’t know if that’s plastic or wood,” he said.
That’s Turnbull in a nutshell. Every interaction is a miniature adventure.
It’s difficult to know what things would look like if the Tigers and Turnbull had been able to mend their relationship.
But it’s interesting to see where both parties stand a year later.
“A whirlwind,” Turnbull said of last season. “Craziness. But also a blessing in disguise.”
(Top photo: Mitchell Leff / Getty Images)