Jackson Jobe's grand Saturday return reflects some Draft Day history -- and debate -- from 2021

Jackson Jobe on Saturday at San Francisco celebrated his 15-month reunion with the Tigers in Zeus-like fashion.

He threw 100-mph thunderbolts as part of a five-inning, one-hit, four-strikeout shutout that made a few folks remember why the Tigers picked him third-overall in the 2021 MLB Draft.

Getting back Jobe is consolation for AJ Hinch having to say goodbye last week to two-fifths of his starting rotation: Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize.

Seeing that Jobe, who hadn’t pitched in a big-league game since May of last year, has maybe even more power and fury as part of a 24-year-old right-hander’s careful body-building during a Tommy John sabbatical, is also nice tonic for Hinch and the Tigers as they stand to anoint their next 1-and-2 starters: Jobe and Troy Melton.

It’s not an insult to Keider Montero or Framber Valdez or Jack Flaherty or any other Tigers pitcher that Melton and Jobe loom as the Tigers’ highest-horsepower arms.

It’s all a matter of what they throw. And what MLB students saw Saturday at Oracle Park, as part of an 8-0 whipping of the Giants, was a Tigers starter who, beginning with the triple-digit fastball, throws five high-quality pitches.

Which is why he was drafted third-overall.

About that year’s draft, which has been a Tigers hot-potato debate since Sunday, July 11, 2021, when most Tigers fans and prognosticators (hand raised) thought Detroit blew it by taking Jobe over prevailing favorite, California prep shortstop Marcelo Mayer, who was immediately scooped-up by the Red Sox at four-overall.

A footnote: Mayer was traded last week by the Red Sox to, yes, the Giants, after persuading the Red Sox he wasn’t quite worth that No. 4 status, at least as much as they had concluded after 114 big-league games in which Mayer hit .223 with a .625 OPS. It doesn’t mean Mayer, a left-hand stick who is only 23, won’t light things up later. But two-season impressions count in big-league front offices.

As for those 2021 deliberations and how Jobe bested Mayer in the view of Tigers chief sleuths Al Avila, David Chadd, Scott Pleis, James Orr, et al. There were scouting insights at work then, and now.