Jackson Jobe back with Tigers as Kenley Jansen focused on improvement
· Yahoo Sports
SEATTLE – Scott Harris said reinforcements were coming. The Detroit Tigers' president of baseball operations wasn’t messing around.
Jackson Jobe, a big piece of the organization’s future, arrived Tuesday, Aug. 4, at T-Mobile Park just hours ahead of the Tigers’ series opener against the Mariners.
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He will pitch in San Francisco this weekend, likely on Saturday evening and almost certainly as its starter in a nationally televised game (7:15 p.m., Fox). Manager A.J. Hinch said the team will try to stretch him out to help the bullpen and thinned-out rotation with Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize gone.
But only to a point. He has to be watched and will no doubt be on a pitch count – he threw 70 pitches over four innings at High-A West Michigan on Sunday in his last rehab start. Don’t expect him to throw many more than that against the Giants.
Jobe is returning after nearly a 14-month absence for recovery and rehab after Tommy John surgery. The 100 mph-throwing 24-year-old is a tantalizing piece of the future, but the Tigers hope he could be a formidable piece of the present.
If they are to make a run to the postseason at all – the Tigers entered Tuesday 2½ games out of the final American League wild-card spot – they’ll need Jobe to give the rotation some innings, and preferably productive ones. A few of Jobe’s veteran teammates, for what it’s worth, were clear-eyed that this playoff push is no pipe dream.
No one was more forceful in that belief than right-handed reliever Kenley Jansen, who told reporters he chose the Tigers in the offseason because he hadn’t made the playoffs since 2022, and he missed ir. That means, he continued, if the Tigers are to get there for the third straight season, he needs to be better.
Much better.
“I need to step it up,” he said, “pitch better. You know, I’ll be showing that a little bit. And the rest of the guys can step up ... We just gotta come out there with a chip on our shoulder. ... Let’s lock it down and hopefully the lineup just keeps doing what they’re doing, and we’ll take it from there.”
Wait, he had more:
“I’ll be honest, the American League is not that great this year, and everything is wide open. The division is wide open. ... People count us out? Great. I love it. We gotta prove it. Not proving [for] other people ... prove to ourselves what we’re capable of. ... I gotta prove to myself to be better out there.”
Jobe just wants to prove that he belongs, that he is stronger, that he is ready, that he is back. He’d been gone a while. Now he was grinning, and grateful, no matter that he’d been bopping around the Midwest trying to stay ahead of the rain in order to get his rehab starts finished the last couple of weeks.
His last trip was surely the sweetest, and definitely the longest, not to mention the giddiest. He got the call he’d been waiting on for close to 14 months late Monday, back in Detroit. The Tigers were ready for him to rejoin them.
He’d pitched the day before for High-A West Michigan, where he’d thrown 70 pitches – 45 for strikes – in his fifth rehab startthis season. He’d been scheduled to pitch for Triple-A Toledo. The weather had other ideas.
So, Jobe went back to Comstock Park, a suburb of Grand Rapids, where he threw his first two rehab games – he also threw two rehab games for Double-A Erie.
'I want this to last me'
And now he was here, standing before his locker stall in the visitors' clubhouse at T-Mobile Park, having arrived in Seattle just a couple hours before the team bus was supposed to leave the hotel for the ballpark.
He grinned. Of course, he did. He was just starting his big-league career when he felt something in his elbow. That was the end of May 2025. The Tigers put him on the 15-day IL for right elbow flexor strain, a condition that often portends Tommy John surgery.
Less than two weeks later, the club announced 2021's No. 3 overall pick would miss the remainder of the season, 10 starts into his career.
The sudden stop to his pitching life was tough. That’d been his identity.
“The game was kind of taken away from me, to be honest,” he said. “I had to figure out my identity away from the game.”
He also had to get stronger. Rehab gave him the chance.
“I had to continue to remind myself that this is for the long haul,” he said. “Obviously, I want this to last me. I don’t ever want to do this again.”
Surgery, that is. Not rehab. Well, maybe rehab, too.
Quick hits
- Drew Anderson will start Wednesday (9:40 p.m. EDT, Detroit SportsNet) in Seattle. Hinch wants to stretch his start to hopefully three or four innings, so it won’t be a true bullpen game. Left-hander Framber Valdez will start the series finale on Thursday (4:05 p.m.).
- Right hander Yilber Diaz was called up from Triple-A Toledo to give the Tigers some bullpen depth. They will need it. He was acquired off waivers from the Arizona Diamondbacks in June.
- The bullpen could get more help in the not-too-distant future when LHP Brant Hurter returns. He was scheduled to make a rehab start in Low-A Lakeland on Tuesday. Kerry Carpenter is completing a return to play hitting, running and defense progression.
Contact Shawn Windsor: [email protected]. Follow him @shawnwindsor.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Jackson Jobe back with Tigers as Kenley Jansen focused on improvement