TOLEDO, Ohio — Last Tuesday night in Triple A, Jace Jung homered twice. The first was on slider low and in. The second was off a 92.4 mph fastball on the inner edge of the plate.
That serves as a suitably strong example of Jung’s hitting profile.
“Just making sure I was on time for everything,” Jung said. “Just happened to go out of the ballpark tonight.”
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Jung is short-spoken like that. He’s a grinder and a ballplayer. Never going to be one for fluffy quotes or excess information. Given the difficulties of hitting in the big leagues and all the rigor and overthinking that could come with it, perhaps these traits will serve Jung well in the near future.
As of now, though, it does not seem Jung is close to kicking in the door and making his major-league debut, despite how loudly the counting numbers suggest he is knocking.
We are now a Jace Jung fan account. 💥
🤝: @AAAClubAlliance pic.twitter.com/2IA6Jb5JQJ
— Toledo Mud Hens (@MudHens) June 18, 2024
Jung entered Tuesday evening hitting .274 with a .396 on-base percentage and 11 home runs this season. His .903 OPS ranked 29th among all Triple A players.
Now it is a matter of finishing touches and making the adjustments that could help Jung’s plate prowess better translate to the major leagues. He needs only ask teammates such as Parker Meadows and Spencer Torkelson to learn how different life can be at the game’s highest level.
“It’s definitely different,” Meadows said. “I think the stuff is similar. But I think in the big leagues they miss smaller. They just have better location and better feel for their pitching.”
In recent days, the Tigers have wanted to see Jung cut down on strikeouts. He has a 22.5 percent strikeout rate this season, a number that is bound to jump whenever he reaches the big leagues. The good news: Jung has been on a tear in June, and all the underlying data suggests he is making progress in the right areas. Jung was striking out at a 26.4 percent clip in April and May. In June, he is striking out only 9.4 percent of the time. His whiff rate was 30.3 percent in April and May. In June, it is down to 24 percent.
The batted ball data has been strong, too. Over the season’s first two months, Jung had an average exit velocity of only 87.4 mph, indicating his quality of contact had not been all that good. So far in June, his average exit velo has leaped to 92.7 mph.
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He is whiffing at pitches in the zone slightly less often, and his 21.7 percent swing rate at pitches outside the strike zone is tolerable. His walk rate for the year is a highly encouraging 17 percent. He generally has no problem getting the ball in the air, evidenced by the 40.9 percent fly-ball rate.
That’s a lot of numbers to make a simple point: Jung is trending in a good direction.
“Jace’s bat has been impressive,” Triple-A manager Tim Federowicz said. “It’s been fun to watch, fun to see him in the lineup every day.”
Jace Jung's having himself a season 💥
▪️ 40 RBI
▪️ 11 home runs
▪️ 33 runs pic.twitter.com/w7tG37LdpQ— Toledo Mud Hens (@MudHens) June 17, 2024
Jung has the trendline of a player itching to prove he is ready. But will it result in a debut at Comerica Park this summer? Hard to say. As with Colt Keith and Justyn-Henry Malloy last season, we have seen the Tigers take things slow with prospects in Scott Harris’ tenure as president of baseball operations.
Jung, like a prospect well trained on saying the right things, did not disclose much about his adjustments over the past month when he spoke after last week’s two-homer game.
“I don’t like telling the media too much about my approach because sometimes other teams look into media,” Jung said. “But I think I have a solid plan when I go up there. Me and (hitting coach) Mike Hessman really work on that. We come in every day, try to do the same routine and keep it going.”
It’s also worth noting there were concerns coming out of the draft about Jung’s ability to hit velocity. The gap in velo is one of the chief factors that can make it difficult to judge Triple-A hitters. Jung is hitting .343 this season against fastballs slower than 95 mph. But at 95 mph or above, Jung is hitting only .154.
“We want it all,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said, speaking generally about evaluating Triple-A players. “We want the player to dominate the level that he’s at. But there’s so many more details that get exposed in the big leagues that we try to look at a little deeper when we’re looking at Triple-A players. It’s not easy, because we don’t want to create the notion that statistics don’t matter or (how) you perform doesn’t matter, because it does. But it’s not always the end-all be-all … We have to look at it at a deeper level given the gap between the two levels.”
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Defense is the other factor that could delay Jung’s debut. He began his transition to third base late last year and impressed with his handle on the position during spring training. A larger sample, however, has shown there is still plenty to clean up.
Jung has played 42 games at third base this season and 17 games at second (so that is still in his tool bag). He has made 11 errors at third compared to only one at second.
Although he may be capable of manning the position, Keith — currently worth minus-8 defensive runs saved for the Tigers — is another example of how high the bar gets when you’re doing something every day in the major leagues.
So while Jung is doing many things well, there are reasons he is still in Toledo and reasons Major League Baseball is the highest level in the world.
His time is coming, but the alarm isn’t blaring quite yet.
(Photo: Jonathan Tenca / Cal Sport Media via Associated Press)
