Jeff Passan dropped the news on Sunday night.
Over the last few weeks, a little undercurrent of chatter involving right-hander Jack Flaherty and the Detroit Tigers began to percolate. Now it has come to fruition as Jeff Passan reports that the Tigers and Flaherty have agreed on a one-year deal at $25 million with a player option for $10 million available to him for 2026. The Tigers rotation looks significantly improved, while this probably puts an end to speculation about Alex Bregman.
The terms of the deal are really perfect for what Scott Harris and Jeff Greenberg are trying to do here. Obviously the Tigers like Jack Flaherty, and he liked playing for the Tigers and had great success. The 29-year-old pitcher has had nothing but good things to say about his four months in a Detroit Tigers’ uniform. However, considering how tight the payroll strings appear to be held, they can’t be in the business of throwing around four and five year deals to starting pitchers. There’s just too much chance of dead money involved.
Per Passan’s report, the contract will pay Flaherty $25 million for the 2025 season. He can then choose to opt-out, or exercise his $10 million player option with the Tigers for 2026. That gives Flaherty some security in case of injury. The player option has escalators based on his 2025 performance as well. If he starts 15 games or more, his option for 2026 becomes $20 million total. This all seems very good on the Tigers’ side of things.
To acquire Flaherty on such a short-term commitment is perfect for the Tigers’ needs. Locking up a lot of money on starting pitching isn’t going to work for them. Landing Flaherty like this is a gift.
For his part, Flaherty continued his career resurgence last season, and just wasn’t rewarded. Flaherty had a decent year and showed he was basically healthy in 2023. His numbers weren’t anything special, but he was on the right track after some tough years in the injury and performance departments.
Then he signed a one-year deal with the Tigers last offseason and went on to probably the best stretch of his career. He put up a 2.95 ERA with a 3.12 FIP over 106 2⁄3 innings before getting traded to the Dodgers. The Tigers did very well in that trade, acquiring Thayron Liranzo and Trey Sweeney, and now they have Flaherty back anyway. Most expected him to get four or possibly five year offers that would push into nine figure territory this offseason, but it didn’t happen.
The back injection Flaherty required at mid-season probably didn’t help his case. Nor did a rough postseason for the Dodgers in which his fastball was trending down to 91-92 mph in several outings. Was he running out of gas, or are there some systemic issues that are always going to limit his ability to handle a full workload?
Apparently not enough teams were willing to bet on the former scenario, and that’s to the Tigers benefit. They know the player really well, and it’s pretty easy to trust their judgement on a pitcher. If he was going to take a pillow contract, Detroit makes perfect sense for both parties. The commitment is too minimal to ever really hurt them.
Meanwhile, a rotation of Tarik Skubal, Jack Flaherty, Reese Olson, Jackson Jobe, and Alex Cobb, sounds like a very good position to be in heading into spring camp. They now have plenty of starting pitching depth behind them as well, with Casey Mize, Keider Montero, Brant Hurter, and more all available to plug holes in the rotation or the bullpen as required.
Whatever else you might have hoped for this offseason, you can’t really be unhappy about this move. Getting Flaherty back on such favorable terms is a really nice consolation prize. We’d still love to see them make a trade or find another way to improve the offense.
For now, one would assume this takes the Tigers out of the running for Alex Bregman just based on the likely 2025 payroll were they to pay him $30 million a year or so. The addition of Flaherty along with Gleyber Torres’ bat does give the Tigers a good chance to be better overall in 2025, though they still look a good position player short of a serious contender. For now, we’re happy to have Jack Flaherty back in the fold and look forward to see this rotation in action soon.