Bulked-up Tink Hence begins bid for spot in Cardinals’ bullpen after lost year
Some parts of watching Tink Hence command the mound at Cacti Park of the Palm Beaches on Tuesday evening felt familiar.
Two different fastballs held true in the mid-90s, five pitch types were worked in despite only 13 being thrown, the one hit he allowed was a dribbler he deflected just far enough away from Thomas Saggese at shortstop to avoid an out, and he walked off the mound with a strikeout in his pocket.
That walk, though, was part of what looked different. It was brisk and confident, the pace between pitches sharp. He was bent slightly more at the waist, offset to one side of the rubber, and his frame looked fuller and more muscular than it ever has before.
After a lost year of just more than 20 innings spread mostly across rehab assignments at four levels, suddenly the step from high school prospect to pitcher on the precipice of joining the St. Louis Cardinals seemed much more manageable.
The role, too, has changed, at least temporarily.
“The way we’re looking at Tink is keeping him on a reliever schedule,” said manager Oli Marmol on Wednesday before the team’s matchup with the New York Mets in Port St. Lucie, Florida. “One inning to two innings at a time, multiple times per week, and then at the end of spring, evaluating what the next steps are. For the time being, he’ll kind of keep that schedule, and not building up as a starter.”
However temporary the team wishes to insist the assignment is, it’s not a small change for a pitcher who was, for three years running, listed among the game’s top 100 prospects by each of Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus and MLB Pipeline.
Drafted in 2020 from an Arkansas high school, Hence will turn 24 this season, his second occupying a spot on the 40-man roster.
President of baseball operations Chaim Bloom was asked early in the winter if it was essential for Hence to contribute to the big league club this season, and he shied away from that pronouncement. Roster spots, though, are not infinite, and the time will come when hard choices have to be made. The first comes with the move to the bullpen in the hope it can prevent others from arriving later down the road.
“It’s turning out great,” said Hence, who added 10 to 15 pounds of muscle over the winter in filling out his frame. “I’m slowly gaining my confidence and my trust. Even just communicating with the team, telling them what I’m working on, what to look for. They were just telling me when I get on the mound, just try to relax and have fun.”
The organization-wide turnover in decision-makers and development staff came at a fortuitous time for Hence, who was at risk of seeing his career stall out in the minors without a better grasp on how to keep himself healthy enough to compete.
He’s managed just 68 starts and fewer than 260 innings spread across his five seasons of minor league baseball thanks to a series of recurring injuries, including a lat strain during last year’s spring training from which he was never truly able to rebuild strength.
With his slender build perhaps not well equipped to sustain his high-velocity repertoire, it’s likely that the previous coterie of decision-makers would’ve come to the same conclusion regarding his workload as the present group has.
There are relatively recent parallels to be drawn with former Cardinals; Carlos Martínez’s health failed him as his commitment did, and Alex Reyes had impeccable skill that nonetheless pushed his body past the breaking point.
The difference between those two and Hence, though, is that they made significant contributions to the big league club, even if those contributions were brief. Hence hasn’t yet been able to climb even that far, despite every desire on the part of the club to see him seize every possible opportunity.
“It was good just to see him out there,” Marmol said of Hence’s inning of game work. “Being able to attack the zone with the fastball, the velo to be there, mixing the other stuff, obviously only for one inning.”
There is no shortage of options in camp to fill out the right side of the bullpen. Riley O’Brien, Ryne Stanek and Matt Svanson are set to be key contributors, Matt Pushard and George Soriano can’t be moved off the roster without risk of losing them, and a clutch of players including Ryan Fernandez, Gordon Graceffo and Chris Roycroft have all pitched substantial innings in the big league bullpen in recent seasons.
That’s before reaching Luis Gastelum, the talk of camp — and beyond — with an outrageous bending changeup that has bedeviled every hitter who’s seen it.
None of that points to Hence heading north to St. Louis when the season begins, but there will be every opportunity to grow into that spot as the months roll on. In fact, the team is quietly counting on that outcome, and moving him to the bullpen is an essential part of making that happen.
“There’s still things I know I’ve gotta clean up,” Hence acknowledged. “But just finally getting that one [appearance] under me, now it’s like, OK, got it. Now I can just slowly keep building.”
The build has indeed been slow. It may finally be about to top out.