Spencer Turnbull is embracing his ‘fresh start’ and new challenge with the Phillies

About halfway through spring training, Phillies pitcher Spencer Turnbull asked Jeff Hoffman for advice. Hoffman was drafted as a starter but had since transitioned to the bullpen. At age 31, Turnbull was going to do the same thing. He was nervous.

Hoffman had some for him. It was same advice he’d gotten from Sonny Gray when they overlapped in Cincinnati in 2021.

“I told him to try to be like water,” Hoffman said. “Be fluid. Go with the flow. Make it so there’s nothing that could knock you off course.”

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Turnbull is back in the rotation now, and is scheduled to make his first start with the Phillies on Tuesday against the Reds. But Hoffman’s words still apply. He is at a point in his career when he has to be flexible, and that includes pitching out of the bullpen. This is new territory for him. He had pitched just one inning as a reliever since his big league debut in 2018. He did not make any appearances out of the bullpen in the minors, and made only five in his three seasons at the University of Alabama.

But when the Phillies signed Turnbull in February, they made it clear that a spot in the rotation was not guaranteed. A spot on the major league roster wasn’t guaranteed, either. The Phillies had five starters, and Turnbull would be depth.

It was possible they’d try to have him start the season in triple A to stay stretched out, but because Turnbull had more than five years of service time, the Phillies could only send him down with his approval. His path to the big league club would be as a long man.

So, Turnbull began to prepare. He asked Hoffman more questions, as well as Matt Strahm and Ranger Suárez. He tried to figure out what his new pregame routine would look like. He embraced the unpredictability that comes with sitting in the bullpen and waiting for your name to be called.

And then, on March 23, about an hour and a half before the Phillies’ Grapefruit League game against the Yankees, pitching coach Caleb Cotham approached Turnbull, who was about to start his pregame routine.

“Hey — don’t throw,” Cotham said. “We’re going to start you today.”

Taijuan Walker was supposed to start but came down with an injury. Turnbull ended up throwing three innings, allowing just three hits and one hit batter, with five strikeouts. He leaned on his sweeper, a pitch he tinkered with in the offseason but refined over the course of camp. He hit 94 mph a few times on his four-seam fastball, after averaging 92.9 mph on in it 2023.

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It was not an easy situation to be in, but Turnbull felt comfortable. He wondered if it was a harbinger. By the end of the camp, he realized it was. Manager Rob Thomson called him in his office and shook his hand. Walker was put on the injured list with right shoulder soreness. Turnbull had made the club as a starter.

“Obviously, you don’t want to get an opportunity because somebody gets hurt,” Turnbull said. “You feel that for that player. But, also it is part of the game. You’ve got to be ready. And baseball is such a game of what have you done for me lately, anyway. And I’ve been on the good side of that and the bad side of that. So, I know how that feels.

“And that’s just kind of ... I always wanted to be ready in case something, God forbid, happened to one of our starters. So I was like, ‘All right, I’m going to be ready for that.’”

He’s glad he was. Turnbull doesn’t like to think too far ahead, but he does recognize the opportunity that is in front of him. He believes he has yet to reach his full potential as a starter. The past few seasons in Detroit were difficult, and last season, he said, was “the bottom of the barrel.”

Not long after he threw a no-hitter on May 18, 2021 against the Mariners, Turnbull underwent Tommy John surgery. He missed the rest of the 2021 season along with the 2022 season. When he came back in 2023, he was eager to get a feel for his stuff and return to the pitcher he was once was.

Things did not go according to plan. Turnbull fractured his neck early in the season. He tried to push through it but was placed on the injured list on May 12. He didn’t throw a big-league pitch for the rest of the season.

“Going through TJ and all that stuff was really hard,” he said. “But then last year, trying to come back from it and the year just going so, on the surface, horrendously wrong was very tough.

“That first year back is kind of the year to kind of figure this stuff out again and figure out how you feel. I didn’t really get the chance to fully kind of return from TJ, because my time was cut so short. So that was frustrating.”

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It was frustrating from an emotional standpoint, too. Detroit drafted Turnbull in 2014, and at the time, he was seen as a top prospect. He was a key member of the rotation in his early years, but by 2023, he was getting in disagreements with the club that required union involvement. The Tigers decided not to tender him a contract entering the 2024 season.

It’s not what Turnbull expected, but neither was this sudden move to the Phillies rotation. But whether he’s pitching the first inning or the eighth, he is going to try to heed his teammate’s advice.

“I’m a big believer in God, and a big believer in his timing,” he said. “And I think I’m right where the Lord wants me. I didn’t expect to be here, but I’m so happy that I am. I didn’t expect to be a free agent a year early, either, but it’s worked out really good so far. And I’m really excited about it.

Turnbull added: “Emotionally, it’s really good for me to have a fresh start somewhere else. Clean slate. I really needed it for a host of reasons. And I’m really happy that I’m here.”