Putkonen me in, Coach
Luke Putkonen pitching for the Whitecaps back in 2009
The Detroit Tigers seem to have the pitching rotation for the 2013 season all but set. With Verlander, Scherzer, Fister, and Sanchez almost surely taking up the first four spots, the real competition will come down to the fifth starter. In the eyes of most fans and the Tigers front office, this looks to be a two-man race between Drew Smyly and Rick Porcello. Smyly, the lefty, did well last season, and would be the only south-paw in the rotation. Porcello is the kid with tons of talent, but his numbers could be better. He’s still young, though, and most fans feel his numbers would be much better is the Tigers were a little tighter in the infield. The two-man race aside, spring training is just around the corner, and usually their is a player or two who steps up and forces the coaches to take a good long look in his direction. This spring the guy who could turn some heads in Lakeland could be right-handed pitcher Luke Putkonen. No doubt the Tigers are high on this 6’6″, 210 pounder, and placed him in the Arizona Fall League last, well, fall, to hone some skills. Putkonen’s stats from the AFL aren’t amazing, posting a 5.06 ERA while allowing 19 hits and seven walks in 21 1/3 innings. Last season, he made 24 appearances (two of those starts) for the Toledo Mud Hens, with an ERA of 4.29. When called up to the Tigers, he appeared in 12 games, striking out 10 with a 3.94 ERA. It seems Putkonen needs to develop his secondary pitches to get outs, though, if he’s going to make that jump to the bigs permanent. Statistics show he throws his fastball 65% of the time, with an average speed of 94.6 mph. It also looks like working some long relief may be his calling, but don’t count him out as a starter. Recently Detroit’s assistant general manager Al Avila made some comments about him to the Detroit Free Press:
“He actually impressed us in the Fall League that we feel real good about Putkonen. I know Jim Leyland likes him and lot. He’s a real big guy with real good stuff. We’ve had many conversations about him being a starter or reliever. My thing is-this is just my philosophy-if you can keep a guy a starter and work with him as a starter and all of a sudden he shows he can be a starter, that’s the best-case scenario. If it doesn’t happen, you can always make him a reliever.”
It seems like Putkonen is already getting some positive attention, and it will be fun to watch him in Spring Training here in a few weeks. It’s no secret I love watching the guys we’ve seen play in West Michigan move up the ladder, and we wish him the best. He pitched for the Whitecaps back in 2009, going 7-8 with a 3.13 ERA and 63 strikeouts!
Photo courtesy of the Detroit Free Press
Minoring In Baseball 
All I remember about Putkonen from when he got called-up by the Tigers at the end of the season is that he almost certainly rounded-up with whatever height he was listed at.
-Mateo
http://mateofischer.mlblogs.com
Mateo-I can’t remember much about his height from seeing him in ’09, but, I know personal stats are always exagerated by teams. I think it’s starts at the college level, maybe high school, to get into the heads of their opponents.
-Mike
It’s always fun to hear about the up and comers and when the Tigers bring someone up, it’s fun to suddenly remember, ‘oh yeah. Mike talked about this guy. he’s blah blah blah…’ And I don’t AFL stats are always a good indicator anyway. It’s at such an odd time of year, and there is such a wide variety of talent levels represented, that AFL play hard to guage. I mean, Mike Trout looked average to the low end of average in the AFL largely becuase I think he was tired by that point.
— Kristen
Kristen-I agree the AFL stats are hard to figure out sometimes. I think it’s more for just player development than anything else. The Tigers seemed impressed with him regardless.
-Mike