Rising Star: Baseball Player Spencer Torkelson

Arizona State slugger Spencer Torkelson was the No. 1 overall pick by the Detroit Tigers in Wednesday’s 2020 Major League Baseball draft. Torkelson was selected by the Tigers as a third baseman despite playing his career at ASU as a first baseman.

Torkelson becomes the fourth Arizona State baseball player to go No. 1 overall in program history, easily an NCAA-high – two more than any other program. He joins Rick Monday (1965), Floyd Bannister (1976) and Bob Horner (1978) to earn the prestigious designation out of ASU. 

Torkelson had 54 homers in his career, second in Sun Devil history and needed just three to surpass Bob Horner’s long-standing school record of 56 – a feat he almost surely would have achieved with a full season this year.

Torkelson played 35 multi-game series at ASU and homered at least once in 28 of those. He played 20 Pac-12 series and homered in 18 – the season finales against Cal (2018) and Stanford (2019) being the only exceptions. He had at least one hit in 104 of his 129 career games and multiple hits in 50 of those.