Sunday Notes: Jaden Hamm Is Riding High as a Tigers 2023 Draft Gem.
Jaden Hamm was surprised when he was selected by the Detroit Tigers in last year’s draft. That it happened in the fifth round wasn’t unexpected — he’d been projected to go in the three-to-five range — but the organization he would soon ink a professional contract with certainly was. The right-hander out of Middle Tennessee State explained it this way when I talked to him prior to a game at West Michigan’s LMCU Ballpark last month:
“I get a call [from my agent] and he’s like, ‘The Tigers are you taking you in the fifth,’” Hamm recalled. “ I was like, ‘What?’ He was like, ‘The Tigers.’ I was like, ‘I know who you said, but I didn’t expect that.’”
Subterfuge played a role in the surprise. Hamm had talked to Detroit’s area scout only a handful of times during his junior season, and while he went to the draft combine and had meetings with teams. the Tigers weren’t one of them. His best guess was that he was going to be drafted by the Arizona Diamondbacks, Atlanta Braves, or Houston Astros. That none of them — nor any other team — pulled the trigger in time has turned out well for the Tabbies. Hamm has emerged as the second-best pitching prospect in Detroit’s system, behind only shooting star
Jackson Jobe.
The numbers tell a big part of the story. In 99 innings with West Michigan, the 22-year-old (as of earlier this week) Hamm has overpowered High-A hitters to the tune of a 2.64 ERA, a 3.10 FIP, a 30.6% strikeout rate, and just 73 hits allowed.
Another part of the story are Hamm’s metrics, which include 20-21 inches of vertical ride on his low-to-mid 90s four-seamer. Learning how best to employ his heater is yet another part of how he’s gone from relatively unknown to a breakout prospect.
“I kind of knew what it was doing in college, but I’d always been taught to throw it at the knees, fastball at the knees,” explained Hamm, whom
Baseball America recently added to their Top 100. “When I’d do that it would be riding to belt high. I wouldn’t [throw it up in the zone] with any intent. The catchers would always say it had some hop, and we had TrackMan, but I was at a mid-major and we didn’t really dive into the metrics. It was more like, ‘Throw your stuff in the zone and just try to get outs.’”
A spiked curveball is the righty’s go-to secondary. A 12-6 that he delivers from straight over the top — “I’m like a 6’5” release” — it serves as a good complement to his elevated heaters. Hamm volunteered that if he were to write a scouting report on himself, he’d be “a north-south guy” who occasionally throws a changeup or a slider.
The slider is new this season, while yet another pitch was tinkered with but subsequently scrapped. Hamm worked on a sweeper during his draft year — “it was coming up as the next cool thing” — but because it was too easy for hitters to recognize, he wasn’t getting many swings-and-misses on it. Going back to featuring his one-two combination not only got the whiffs back, it helped jump-start his appeal to scouting departments — one in particular.
“I started throwing the 12-6 more often and began getting more swings-and-misses, more rollovers, and stuff like that,” said Hamm. “I stuck with that the second half of my junior year, and that’s kind of when I flipped the script and kind of powered through and ended up finishing really well going into the draft.”
Again, one team in particular was captivated by the potential in Hamm’s north-south arsenal. Now that he’s adding an east-west weapon — his gyro-ish slider has been coming along well — the ceiling is even higher.
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