The sidearming right-hander will be stationed in Toledo this spring, but could be called on to help the Tigers.
The major Detroit Tigers trade at the 2024 July deadline was the acquisition of Thayron Liranzo and Trey Sweeney from the Los Angeles Dodgers in the Jack Flaherty deal. That moved worked out well for both sides, but Scott Harris was busily dealing away several other players. Lefty Andrew Chafin went to the Texas Rangers in exchange for our 20th ranked prospect RHP Joseph Montalvo and RHP Chase Lee.
Lee is a sidearm reliever who rarely tops 91 mph, but his mix of fastball types and sweeper-slider combination makes him a tricky at-bat, especially for right-handed hitters. The Rangers certainly thought so when they spent the second pick of the sixth round of the 2021 draft on the reliever out of Alabama. He racked up a ton of strikeouts in their farm system and limited home runs, but trouble with walks kept him from breaking through at the major league level.
Needing relief help last summer, which ultimately didn’t help them at all, the Rangers flipped him to Detroit for Chafin, and much like the Flaherty case, now the Tigers have both the major league player and the prospects they traded him for back in the fold.
After coming over in the deal, Lee was assigned to the Triple-A Toledo Mud Hens. With the Tigers he drastically cut his walks while punching out 32.3 percent of hitters faced. He put up a 3.27 ERA and a 2.75 FIP over 22 innings of work. That strong finish, reversing the trend of higher walks with the Rangers, induced the Tigers to keep him on the 40-man roster this offseason. Lee had a pretty solid showing in spring camp but one bad outing with a couple of home runs allowed showed there was still some work ahead of him. Now he’ll work alongside Jason Foley and Andrew Chafin trying to earn a call-up when the Tigers need relief help this season.
Lee mixes his fastball types, with both fourseamer and sinker sitting around 89 mph. He primarily uses the sinker against right-handers to help jam them, while the fourseamer takes precedence against left-handers for the same reason. Throwing inside to left-handed hitters, he doesn’t want the sinker tailing back over the plate, so he sticks with the fourseamer to get in on their hands.
Against right-handers, Lee will also use a heavy volume of sweepers. Against lefties he’ll mix his slider in almost as much as the sweeper. The sweeper is typically around 80-81 mph, with a lot of horizontal movement out of that low, side arm slot. Right-handers are consistently seeing the sweeper start in their hot zones, beginning their swing, and then flailing as the pitch bends all the way across the strike zone to be buried down and away. He’s racked up a solid but unspectacular whiff rate of 28.3 percent with it at the Triple-A level going back to the beginning of the 2024 season. The slider has more depth and is typically 84 mph. He uses it a little more when he needs to throw something that’s a change of pace for a strike.
As Lee is likely to be used as right-handed hitter specialist for the most part at the major league level, it’s the sinker-sweeper combination that you’re likely to see most from him. However, the slider and fourseamer give him extra weapons to work with against lefties, and he’s handled them pretty well too. He’s just more home run prone against southpaws and not the guy you want facing Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman in an outing, as an extreme example.
Because he doesn’t have the velocity to overpower major league hitters, command is even more crucial in Lee’s case. If he can dial in his stuff and keep it out of the middle of the plate consistently, he has a good shot to get a look in the Tigers’ bullpen this season. It’s just a fairly fine needle to thread.
2025 Outlook
Lee got off to a good start with the Mud Hens over the weekend, spinning a pair of perfect innings against the Cleveland Guardians ’ Triple-A affiliate. He kept the sinker and the sweeper down in the zone or below it consistently, and that’s all he needs to keep doing. The margin for error isn’t great because of the lack of velocity, but as long as Lee is spotting his stuff he’s an option for AJ Hinch if someone in the bullpen falters in the early going this season.
It’s hard to project Lee’s chances of really becoming a regular member of the bullpen. Teams with big hitting lefties are always going to be an issue for him, and Hinch and company will want him deployed against right-handed hitters for the most part. That makes for a bit of a tricky fit on the roster without the versatility the Tigers prefer. However, if he can tune up his fastball command a little more and show he can consistently throw strikes without leaving the ball up too often, lefties won’t have much success either, and it becomes an easier proposition to mix him into the middle relief matrix for the Tigers.