Jackson Jobe may have unlocked new weapon in Tigers' much-needed win over Rays

Jackson Jobe is in a weird gray area right now. He's coming back from a long absence after Tommy John and is still being stretched out, but he's also still under the watchful eye of Tigers fans who are expecting greatness out of baseball's former No. 1 pitching prospect. Any struggles have to be given a little bit of grace, but at what point does that leeway end?

He was excellent in his season debut, pitching five one-hit innings against the Giants, but got knocked around in his next start, giving up six runs to the White Sox in 3 2/3 innings. He's leveled out since then, with two back-to-back one-run outings.

On Tuesday against the Rays, he pitched three scoreless before getting into some trouble in the fourth. Junior Caminero led off the inning with a single, then former Tigers prospect Liam Hicks put runners in scoring position on a double (with a little help from Max Clark, who misread the ball in center field), and then a single scored a run before Jobe got out of the inning.

He was pulled after getting his first out of the fifth, having already driven his pitch count up to 86 after having to labor in the fourth.

While not quite as efficient as we'd hope, the Tigers offense pulled themselves together behind him for a 4-1 win, and Jobe found an unexpected new weapon: a tweaked curveball.

Jackson Jobe's curveball could be the key to his success as Tigers' future ace

He debuted a curve last season before he got hurt, throwing it 69 times at an 81.6 MPH average for an underwhelming 21.4% whiff rate. Going into Tuesday's game, he'd thrown it 21 times with zero whiffs this season.

Tuesday told a different story. He threw it 15 times at a 85.1 MPH average, up 2.3 MPH from his average on the season, and it resulted in three out of his four strikeouts on the night. It was good for a 33% called strike + whiff rate, second only to his sinker.

Jobe said after the game that he'd been toying with his mechanics between starts, and loved what he saw. "I've never really gotten swings like that on any breaking ball," he said. "I'm not used to hitters reacting that way, so it was definitely cool to do. I'll continue to get more comfortable with it and it should get better."

His calling card is still his fastball, which is sitting at 97.9 MPH this season and occasionally exceeds 100, but his most-used secondary pitch — the slider — has gotten hammered so far this year. Putting in the work to give himself more routes to success is exactly the kind of work ethic the Tigers want to see from him. And clearly, whatever he did worked.

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