Detroit Tigers' Sawyer Gipson-Long has two journals, a nasty changeup and a bright future

Sawyer Gipson-Long wanted to be a doctor throughout high school and college. He keeps a detailed notebook to balance his schedule as part of his daily routine, prepares for his baseball games like a surgeon would prepare for an operation and competes as hard as anyone when he steps on the mound.

There's something special about him.

"It's not normal at all," said Jack Powell, a veteran scout with the Minnesota Twins who discovered Gipson-Long more than a half-dozen years ago at Etowah High School in Georgia. "You don't find many baseball players aspiring to be doctors."

The 25-year-old — a pre-medical student and right-handed pitcher at Mercer University before the Twins picked him in the sixth round of the 2019 draft — also has a few nasty pitches and a bright future with the Detroit Tigers.

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Gipson-Long, described as "very routine-oriented" by one of his former pitching coaches, joined the Tigers at the 2022 trade deadline (from the Twins in exchange for reliever Michael Fulmer) and made his MLB debut in September 2023.

He was former general manager Al Avila's final trade acquisition. The Tigers fired Avila and replaced him with president of baseball operations Scott Harris.

In his four-start cameo, Gipson-Long posted a 2.70 ERA with eight walks and 26 strikeouts over 20 innings. His 31.7% strikeout rate ranked 16th among 128 pitchers with at least 20 innings in the final month of the season.

Gipson-Long will compete in spring training for a spot in the 2024 Opening Day starting rotation. Right now, he seems like a frontrunner to win one of five jobs and could settle into a mid-rotation role with top-of-the-rotation upside.

"The biggest thing that was really cool to see is how detailed and routine-oriented he is," said Peter Larson, a pitching coach in the Twins' organization who worked with Gipson-Long in 2021 and 2022. "He journals and keeps notes on everything. He was just a different kind of kid and maybe a little more advanced and mature than some other guys. He had a good foundation."

Each page of the personal journal is broken into sections.

He starts by writing down the date.

In the top left section, Gipson-Long creates a checklist of what he plans to accomplish during the day. He keeps the checklist based on his schedule, down to the minute, to stay on track. In the top right section, he writes what he plans to focus on throughout the day.

"Maybe a cue of throwing, an idea that I like, a quote that I read or an affirmation to take me through the day," Gipson-Long said. "After I'm done with my work for the day, I'll write down, in that same section, how I felt, what I did well, what I didn't do well and what I can improve on."

He returns to his journal at night to fill out the gratitude portion in the bottom left section. He writes anything from thought-provoking questions to things he is thankful for in his life.

After his starts, Gipson-Long prints his stats from the game in a separate section with key takeaways.

"I can externalize it a bit," Gipson-Long said. "It just brings me back to a more neutral point. I want to stay as consistent as possible and never get too high or too low."

The journal has been a part of Gipson-Long's routine in professional baseball for the past few years, but in the 2023 season, the content on the pages evolved from a couple of lines to multiple sections. He saves all of his journals.

It's one example of his preparation for success in life and baseball.

"There are two sides to the scouting card," Powell, the longtime scout, said. "The tools and command on one side, but the other side is the makeup side. He checks all sevens and eights (on 20-80 scouting scale) in those makeup boxes."

His best pitch

The changeup, meanwhile, has been a part of Gipson-Long's repertoire since Powell helped sign him to the Twins in 2019, but the 86 mph weapon that he displayed with the Tigers wasn't always his best secondary pitch.

It used to be a work-in-process pitch, with his slider as the primary secondary pitch.

"What an improved changeup could bring to that fastball to pair with the slider was the appeal," said Larson, now the Twins' Triple-A pitching coach. "Something that goes arm-side is also good so that you're covering all parts of the plate. We tried to figure out different variations of the grip."

"I know a million ways that I can't throw it," Gipson-Long said.

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In four starts with the Tigers, Gipson-Long threw 31.8% sliders, 24.4% changeups, 23.8% four-seam fastballs, 18.8% sinkers and 1.2% cutters. His extension averaged an elite 7.5 feet with all of his pitches, which ranked in the 99th percentile, but his extension averaged 7.6 feet when throwing his changeup.

His changeup, of course, generated a 50% swing-and-miss rate, followed by his slider at 40.9%. He threw his changeup to both right-handed and left-handed hitters.

"I tried doing a Vulcan grip here (with the Tigers)," Gipson-Long said, "and I had success with it a couple of times. And then it was playing with the orientation of the ball to figure out what makes it move consistently. I messed around with where the ball was in my hand."

His former coach from the Twins' organization, watching from afar through the PitchingNinja account on X (formerly known as Twitter), noticed a better changeup in 2023 compared to the changeups in 2021 and 2022.

The development of Gipson-Long, specifically the implementation of his sinker and the improvement of his changeup, is a big success story for the Tigers' player development department, namely director of pitching Gabe Ribas and pitching coordinator Stephanos Stroop.

"That was really cool to see the ultimate progression of it," Larson said, "and how much better it is now than a couple of years ago."

His former teammates were stunned when Triple-A Toledo (Tigers) faced Triple-A St. Paul (Twins) in late July, about six weeks before Gipson-Long's MLB debut. It wasn't his best performance, but his arsenal looked a lot different.

"He added the sinker and the cutter," Larson said. "It hasn't really changed much in his ability to attack the strike zone, but some of the feedback from our hitters was that he's got two fastballs, a shorter slider, a bigger slider and a better changeup.

"It's not surprising. He's going to keep working and striving to be the best. Every year, he's improved his pitches and gotten better, and all the while, he stays who he is and attacks the zone."

Gipson-Long posted a below-average 3.6 walks per nine innings in his four starts with the Tigers, but he had an above-average 2.5 walks per nine in 2021, 2.0 walks per nine in 2022 and 2.6 walks per nine before his MLB debut in 2023.

He seems likely to limit walks, just like he did in the minor leagues, once he gets comfortable in the big leagues.

"I've always been a strike thrower, so it's not something I get away from," Gipson-Long said. "I just try to throw my game. No matter how I'm feeling, I know I'm going to be able to throw strikes and fill up the zone. I never try to do anything more than that."

'It's not by happenstance'

The best of Gipson-Long's four starts occurred Sept. 16 against the Los Angeles Angels in Anaheim. It was the second start of his MLB career. He struck out 11 batters across five innings.

He got 23 whiffs on 39 swings.

His 16 strikeouts in the first two games of his career were the most by a Tiger since Ralph Comstock had 19 strikeouts in 1913. He also became the third pitcher in franchise history, joining Comstock and Jack Morris, to record double-digit strikeouts in one of his first two starts.

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"Sawyer does his homework," Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said after the 5-4 win over the Angels. "It's not by happenstance that he has a game plan and knows what he's trying to do. ... That even-keeled vibe that you get from him on the mound is because of that preparation."

There's another notebook, too.

Gipson-Long reads the advance scouting report — provided by the Tigers — before his starts and writes in a separate notebook the best way to attack certain hitters in the opposing lineup.

"It's like a little cheat sheet for me," he said.

He doesn't overcomplicate his pre-start plan because he knows plans can change based on the execution of his pitches, or lack thereof, and the way hitters react. Instead, he simplifies the process by taking notes on who he can strike out, who will be aggressive, who will be passive and any outliers in the data provided to him.

The same type of preparation has been evident away from the baseball field in many ways, like when he signed up for and paid for the Medical College Admissions Test, widely known as the MCAT, as a back-up plan before the Twins drafted him in the sixth round in June 2019.

He didn't want to put all of his eggs in one basket.

Gipson-Long took the MCAT, an extremely difficult exam that takes 7½ hours, about three months after the draft, but when his test day came around that September, he wasn't prepared to score as well as he could have.

He completed the test, but he didn't study as much as he once planned because he was in the beginning stages of preparing for a different kind of test, his MLB debut.

Gipson-Long passed that test with the Tigers at the end of the 2023 season, and considering the combination of his preparation and nasty changeup, he could be a key piece of the starting rotation in 2024 and beyond.

"I definitely learned a lot from trying to do med-school stuff," Gipson-Long said. "It was a lot of work. Now that I'm able to focus more on baseball, I can take the energy I had focused on trying to go to med school and put it towards baseball. It's double what I had in college."

Contact Evan Petzold at epetzold@freepress.com or follow him @EvanPetzold.

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Tigers P Sawyer Gipson-Long's key: Great attention to detail