This story was excerpted from Jason Beck’s Tigers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
Sawyer Gipson-Long took pre-med studies and MCAT exams while at Mercer University. He was prepared to go to medical school before pro baseball was a real option for him. He didn’t necessarily expect the two pursuits to merge in quite this way.
It’s not that the Tigers right-hander knew the ins and outs of Tommy John surgery when doctors told him last spring that he would need the procedure to reconstruct the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow. But he knew what questions to ask. He can talk about doctors removing his palmaris longus tendon as part of the procedure like it was a string of spaghetti without being grossed out like most of us.
Gipson-Long also knew what to look for in the road back, the months of rehab, the good and bad days, the process of getting a feel for pitching back. So, when he started down the road back to pitching, he could see the goal at the end. He could imagine himself taking the mound again.
“I spent a whole year working towards this,” Gipson-Long said on Sunday morning in Kansas City, “so I’ve been expecting it. I’ve been mentally preparing for a whole year.”
That moment comes on Wednesday in Chicago with an expected start against the White Sox. It’ll be Gipson-Long’s first Major League appearance since Sept. 28, 2023, when he was a feel-good prospect coming through the Tigers’ system on a team building for the future.
While Gipson-Long could see his return on the horizon, seeing the scenario around it might have been a little tougher to predict. For the Tigers (40-21), owners of MLB's best record, the future is now. The future is on hold for one pitching prospect, Jackson Jobe, who went on the 15-day injured list last week with a flexor strain that will likely keep him sidelined until at least midseason. For Gipson-Long, ranked as the Tigers’ No. 29 prospect by MLB Pipeline, the future is back on. And with Detroit needing rotation help, he fills a much-needed role immediately upon return.
Gipson-Long feels ready, mentally and physically.
“I feel fresh, and I feel like I didn’t lose anything,” he said. “A lot of the stuff that I had before, we had been working on, and I kind of maximized a lot of my pitches and usages, and I knew what to do. So, there wasn’t a lot that I needed to improve on. It was really just getting healthy.
“I feel like I had the time, too, to work on some smaller things that I might have missed, like throwing pitches to optimal locations or getting the velocity on a pitch higher. But I had all the shapes, and I had the foundation already, so it was pretty easy to build on that and maybe try to add something new.”
For those needing a refresher, Gipson-Long is not an overpowering power thrower; his four-seam fastball averaged 93.6 mph during his September stint in 2023, and averaged the same during his last rehab start for Triple-A Toledo on Thursday. But he can throw a variety at hitters, including a changeup that had a 50 percent whiff rate during his '23 stint, a slider with a solid spin rate and a sinker that hitters pound into the ground for quick outs.
Gipson-Long was learning how to put that arsenal to work against big league hitters when the elbow injury interrupted his career. He underwent hip surgery while he was dealing with the elbow rehab to address another concern. Now, he gets to pick up where he left off.
“I think he’s learning how to pitch at this level and learning how to use his weapons,” manager A.J. Hinch said on Sunday. “We’ve got to continue to push him [to throw] strike one, we’ve got to continue to push him to use his full arsenal. Left-handed hitters become really important for him. He’s done a nice job getting himself back into a competitive mindset as opposed to rehabbing.”
That process, Gipson-Long said, was a big part of his five-start rehab assignment.
“The hardest part was getting my pitches over the plate and missing more over the plate instead of them being so wild,” he said. “So, the first few outings and bullpens, I would say my misses were a little more extreme, maybe a little more off the plate, lower, higher. And now it’s like if I do miss, it’s way more of a competitive miss.”
If he can effectively fill Jobe’s rotation spot, it’ll be not only a triumphant return but a timely one.