MINNEAPOLIS -- Perhaps it¡¯s fitting that the son of a pro golfer picked up his first Major League win on Masters weekend, doing it while grinding out low scores.
When Jackson Jobe was three years old, he tagged along with his dad, Brandt Jobe, for the Par 3 contest ahead of the 2006 Masters at Augusta National. Brandt made the cut in his third and final Masters. But as Jackson grew older, he gravitated to other sports, particularly baseball.
As the 22-year-old right-hander stood on the mound Saturday at Target Field, he was worried about pitch count, not strokes. He had lost Twins leadoff batter Matt Wallner from an 0-2 count to a leadoff walk, the kind of walk that drives him crazy. Then he watched former Tiger Willi Castro get an infield single, putting two on with nobody out for the middle of the Twins' order.
But in baseball, like in golf, success means dealing with adversity, making adjustments and changing your own fortunes. Jobe, having been hampered by long innings in his first two starts this season, was determined not to let it get him again.
"Just getting back in the zone and throwing strikes,¡± Jobe said. ¡°I kind of just committed to throwing strikes and not trying to chase strikeouts.¡±
As Jobe stood at his locker after Saturday¡¯s 4-0 Tigers win, having tossed six scoreless innings, he didn¡¯t care how flashy it was. His fastball topped out at 98 mph, and he spun curveballs at 3000-plus rpm. But as he worked through the Minnesota lineup, he didn¡¯t need the perfect pitch. He needed the right strikes.
"Don¡¯t try to make such a nasty pitch that it¡¯s not competitive,¡± manager A.J. Hinch said.
One out after another, it worked. Jobe retired the middle of the Twins' order, including a strikeout of Trevor Larnach, and rolled from there, retiring 13 in a row and 17 of his final 18 batters.
¡°One thing that you like to make young pitchers do is establish that they¡¯re gonna be in the zone with their stuff,¡± Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said afterward. ¡°And at this level, that¡¯s something that you have to do. We went down that road, but he kept pounding the zone, and we didn¡¯t have the answer.¡±
It wasn¡¯t high-strikeout stuff, but it was effective. Jobe recorded eight swinging strikes, five of them -- and both of his strikeouts -- on a slider variation that registers as a cutter on Statcast with high horizontal movement. His 13 called strikes spanned five different pitch types, including three on his curveball, a pitch he developed in the offseason to try to gain more swinging strikes.
"Part of the game plan for me,¡± Jobe said. ¡°I just haven¡¯t been throwing my curveball for strikes, so there was a big emphasis on that going into today¡¯s outing. I¡¯ve been wanting to throw it a little bit more, but [catcher Tom¨¢s] Nido is not going to call it if I¡¯m not throwing it for strikes. I feel like it took a pretty big step today.¡±
Said Hinch: ¡°I think sometimes maybe he has too many pitches to play with. But he doesn¡¯t, because he needs all of them against different style hitters. And he has the ability to mix when he needs to.¡±
Besides Castro, the other hit off Jobe was an Edouard Julien line-drive single to right with one out in the fifth. He was promptly erased off the basepaths with a Harrison Bader double-play grounder, induced by Jobe¡¯s 2-0 fastball.
Jobe¡¯s stingy work kept the Tigers in a low-scoring game for much of the afternoon, protecting a lead built on sacrifice flies from Torkelson in the first inning and Justyn-Henry Malloy in the fourth. Once the Twins replaced starter Chris Paddack with lefty Kody Funderburk to face left-handed hitters Kerry Carpenter and Riley Greene, the Tigers broke the game open. Carpenter¡¯s leadoff single -- his third hit off a lefty this season to match his total from last year -- set up Torkelson, who crushed a hanging slider 421 feet to the facing of the second deck in left-center field for his fourth homer of the year.
The Tigers welcomed a handful of rookie pitchers to the big leagues last year by celebrating their first Major League victory, dousing them afterward with everything they could find in the clubhouse, from food to toiletries. On Saturday, it was Jobe¡¯s turn. It wasn¡¯t a green jacket, but it was worn with pride.
"The boys were hyped,¡± Jobe said. ¡°[I got] the whole business, everything."