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Tiedemann showing ace-like signs, but biggest hurdle lies ahead in 2023

Ricky Tiedemann Toronto Blue Jays Ricky Tiedemann - The Canadian Press
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TORONTO — Heading into the year, the name Ricky Tiedemann wasn’t on the mainstream radar.

Heading into 2023, however, there’s only one question on the collective mind of Toronto Blue Jays followers: When will Tiedemann be ready for the big leagues?

It’s a testament to the 20-year-old left-hander’s hard work that it’s even realistic to ask that question a little more than a year into his pro career after being selected — stolen is now a better descriptor — with the 91st overall pick in the 2021 draft.

A calendar year and three minor-league levels later, Tiedemann has finished off his first full professional season in Double-A, catapulting himself from projectable 6-foot-4 lefty into a consensus top 50 prospect in the sport.

Across the spring and summer, Tiedemann checked all the boxes the organization had quietly set out for him and then some, accumulating a solid base of 78.2 innings, but also dazzling to the tune of a 2.17 ERA and 13.4 strikeouts per nine innings.

That was enough for the Blue Jays to shut him down early and send him back to the club’s complex in Dunedin to ease into his off-season.

Pretty amazingly, it could be his final winter as a minor leaguer.

“I think it’s pretty surreal and I feel pretty blessed that I was able to make it this far in my first year,” said Tiedemann, who will now focus on working out and light throwing before heading home to California next month. “I know a lot of guys go through a lot of years in the same place and I can’t really complain about my situation right now, being in a good spot age-wise and physically feeling good. I’m happy with where I’m at right now but I definitely want to be at the highest level for sure.”

In addition to the physical break, finishing on a high note with four short-stint starts at Double-A New Hampshire allows Tiedemann to sit down and process everything mentally.

He may even be able to catch his breath.

“I think part of the reason the Blue Jays sent me back to Florida to kind of do a de-load was that as well,” Tiedemann said. “It was kind of a hectic first pro season. A lot happened.”

 

HOW IT HAPPENED

To figure out how Tiedemann blew through the lower minors this year, you have to go back to last summer post-draft.

One of the first stories told of the Huntington Beach product was that he was a ball of talented clay just waiting for a pro team to do the moulding.

The lefty was hovering around 90 mph as a draft prospect, one whose workout regimen consisted of a routine in his home garage.

“The free weights we’re talking about were literally just four dumbbells,” Tiedemann laughs.

“Lifting was something I didn’t really do before getting drafted. I wasn’t deep into a routine in that aspect of it all. I think when I got drafted, they saw that, they knew that and they took it slow with me. I started working out and eating right and I kind of physically got a lot stronger and it showed on the mound.”

After being drafted last summer, Tiedemann didn’t pick up a ball for three weeks, instead simply focusing on his diet and fitness.

When he finally hopped back on a mound for the first time in a Blue Jays uniform on a backfield in Dunedin, the stuff had jumped. Exponentially.

“I noticed it was the best I’ve ever felt,” Tiedemann said. “Somebody saw how I was throwing and noticed it was a little bit harder so we got some numbers on it and it ended up being a lot harder than I used to throw. After that, I was excited to see what I could do in my first year.”

From sitting 89-92 in the summer of 2021 to pumping mid-90s and touching as high as 98, Tiedemann was a different pitcher.

“The Blue Jays were the perfect team,” Tiedemann said.

Behind the scenes, the Jays tried to temper internal expectations, but that all went out the window when Tiedemann started carving up low-level hitters once games started this spring.

Single-A Dunedin posed no challenge. He finished with a 1.80 ERA across six starts.

At High-A Vancouver, he continued to shove with a 2.39 ERA across eight more starts.

At this point, Tiedemann had thrown 67.2 innings and allowed just 34 hits, striking out 103 batters in the process.

Tiedemann’s name was now firmly on the mainstream radar.

 

THE DOUBLE-A ARRIVAL

His first half earned him a trip to the Futures Game at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, and that was where his journey in the low-minors came to an end.

The Jays planned to promote him to Double-A for his next start, and a certain Alek Manoah, who had just punctuated his own meteoric rise through the minors with an All-Star Game appearance, wanted to inform the young lefty.

The storybook phone call didn’t exactly go according to plan.

“Right after the Futures Game me and my family drove out to a lake in the middle of the desert so it was kind of hard to get to me,” Tiedemann recalled with a chuckle. “I was in the pool and I wasn’t by my phone and he was calling me and FaceTiming me like five times and I was like, ‘What? What was that?’ He ended up texting me telling me to answer but I wasn’t at my phone for a while. The next day a coach ended up telling me what was supposed to happen, that he was calling me to tell me I was getting promoted. It was supposed to be a cool moment, but I wasn’t by my phone.”

Once he arrived in Double-A, it was evident Tiedemann’s season was winding down as the Jays limited him to no more than three innings per start.

He mostly cruised through those short stints, allowing just five hits across 11 innings.

Tiedemann’s season could not have gone any better and there’s now a strong foundation in place for him to take the next step.

“It’s about as ideal as you can draw it up,” Blue Jays director of player development Joe Sclafani said.

 

WHERE THIS GOES NEXT

The next step in Tiedemann’s development, and perhaps the toughest to navigate, is pitching deeper into games and continuing to show frontline starter stuff as well as command.

He was not allowed to complete more than five frames this year, and his pitch count topped out at 84.

The leash was on the talented lefty to an extent, and he knew it.

“I felt really good in my five-inning stints and I definitely feel like I can go longer without a doubt,” Tiedemann said. “This is the most I’ve ever pitched in one season of baseball and the Blue Jays knew that and we kind of had a plan and we stuck to it and ended up with a good amount of innings, but I know they’re going to ask more of me in the future so I just have to be ready for that and make sure I can get through it.”

As the Jays monitored the data and Tiedemann’s release point throughout the summer — a drop in release point is a sure indicator of a pitcher tiring as the season goes on — he was still in a great spot, even if he wasn’t touching 98 mph like he was early in the year.

Tiedemann had essentially doubled his previous season-high innings total and the huge velo uptick held for the most part.

“I was extremely happy with that because I knew getting that velo that quick, I didn’t want to be one of the guys were I just fall off halfway through the season and come back throwing 90 again,” Tiedemann said.

Realistically, Tiedemann could get to 120-130 innings in 2023, which is a fairly hefty workload in this day and age, but also a total that will still need to be managed as he gets deeper into games.

The cautionary tale is former top prospect Nate Pearson, who cruised through the lower levels but once the kid gloves came off in 2019 and he started pitching deeper into games, both command issues and health woes came into play and he’s unfortunately been unable to right the ship and get back on track up to this point.

“It’s one of the final steps and it’s extremely challenging,” Sclafani said of what Tiedemann faces next year in his age-20 campaign. “To have success in short bursts is hard enough, but it gets more difficult the deeper you go. Hitters get paid, too. Once they see you once, twice, usually they have a good feel for how you’re trying to attack them, what you look like, and they can pick things up. It’s the difference between being an effective pitcher and a frontline starter. Manoah shows it on a daily basis and some of it isn’t even stuff. It’s just a compete factor and the grit that gets you there. That’s the separating piece for a lot of those guys.”

With a lively fastball, a solid changeup and a developing slider, Tiedemann’s repertoire and delivery look like that of a major-league starter.

If you want to nitpick his season, he maybe walked a few too many batters and needs to find more consistency with his slider at his higher velocity band, but none of this is news to Tiedemann.

“I’ve always had a pretty good changeup in my own eyes, just being a lefty, funky pitcher and didn’t always throw the hardest,” he noted. “The slider, I definitely wanted to tune that in but just gaining velo in my fastball filtered down to my off-speed as well and sharpened my slider and it was just more about throwing strikes with them.”

Back to that question posed at the beginning: When will Ricky Tiedemann be ready for the big leagues?

It’s a question that will be asked of the Jays’ front office multiple times next spring training.

They say Tiedemann will answer that himself.

“You’re 100 per cent right, all eyes are going to be on him next year,” Sclafani said. “Ricky’s going to be the one that determines when he’s ready. We’ll go through the same process that we do every single year and we’ll have the benchmarks that we’re looking for. If he’s hitting those, you’ve seen us push guys pretty quickly if we think they’re ready. Our big-league team’s in a place to win now so if we think they’re ready and they can help us in the big leagues, they’ll determine that with their performance.”