Philadelphia Phillies right-hander Spencer Turnbull will have some extra motivation when he takes the mound on Wednesday afternoon.
Turnbull will get to go up against his former team as Philadelphia faces the host Detroit Tigers in the decisive game of a three-game series.
“I’m excited,” Turnbull said. “I’ll try not to put too much pressure on one game or whatever. I don’t want to give much credit to a revenge tour or whatever. I’m sure I’ll have some extra emotions and adrenaline. I’ll try to have fun doing it, but I’ll try to block out the noise. It’ll feel different.”
Before signing with the Phillies as a free agent back in February, Turnbull played for Detroit for five seasons (2018-21, 2023). He tossed a no-hitter on May 18, 2021, against the Seattle Mariners, but his career was sidetracked by injury soon after that.
Following the no-no, Turnbull started three more games, then needed Tommy John surgery. The procedure kept him out for the rest of 2021, and he went on to miss the 2022 season, too.
Once 2023 rolled around, Turnbull returned, but he made seven ineffective starts for the Tigers and had two options to Triple-A Toledo rescinded due to injury, allowing him to rack up more service time in the majors. He also dealt with a neck injury that season and was not offered a contract for 2024.
“There’s a lot of things that were out of my hands, out of my control,” Turnbull said. “I didn’t really have a lot of say in a lot of stuff that went down last year. All the drama or whatever it was, all 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 about me, but I try not to really worry about it. It is what it is.”
Turnbull has revived his career with the Phillies. He is 3-0 with a 2.63 ERA in 16 appearances, including six starts.
The Tigers hadn’t officially announced a starter, but it is expected that right-hander Keider Montero (0-1, 8.31 ERA) would be recalled from Toledo to pitch a chunk of the contest. He would be making his second career major league appearance.
In his big-league debut on May 29, Montero gave up four runs in 4 1/3 innings against the Pittsburgh Pirates. He has made 13 Triple-A starts this season, posting a 1-4 record and a 5.03 ERA.
“The stuff across the board is really good,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said of Montero. “The more opportunity we can give him to see this level, the better he’s going to be. It’s the experience that he needs.”
As Montero’s Triple-A numbers would suggest, he is far from a finished product.
“One of the things he’s really worked on is how to attack left-handed hitters,” Hinch said. “He’s got to incorporate his changeup a little bit more. … His good innings are really good. He has the occasional misfires that creates some (bad) innings for him.”
Philadelphia’s Bryce Harper will look to extend his hitting streak to 11 games on Wednesday. He had a double and a homer on Tuesday, but the Tigers evened the three-game series with a 4-1 win.
–Field Level Media
