The longtime Washington closer is a small upgrade to Detroit’s bullpen
It’s Deadline Day and Scott Harris is adding to the bullpen, piece by piece. Around lunchtime today, reports came in that the Detroit Tigers had acquired Kyle Finnegan, the closer for the Washington Nationals . In exchange, Detroit is sending two A-ball right-handers, Josh Randall and R.J. Sales, back to Washington.
Finnegan is a 33 year old, six year veteran righty on a one year contract. He’s due approximately $2M for the rest of the season, which has gone just alright for him so far. Finnegan is a fairly typical bullpen arm, throwing 96-97 mph on his heater ~60% of the time and leaning on his best secondary, a splitter, for most of the rest. He does work in a slider about 5% of the time, but is currently a two-pitch pitcher.
This year has been a bit down for Finnegan, as his 4.38 ERA is the worst of his career. The main culprits there have been a career-low strand rate of 64%, one of the 25 worst among relievers, and more importantly, a career-low strikeout rate of just 19.6%, down from his typical 22-25%. While the strand rate figures to improve once he leaves Washington’s bottom-five defense, recapturing the strikeouts will be a bit more challenging.
It would be easy to say Fetter will fix it, and it is likely the Tigers have a plan to help the strikeouts rebound. What that plan is, however, is a bit hard to see from here. In his best seasons, his splitter and slider had a roughly equal timeshare, but since 2023, his splitter has jumped in usage, and the K’s dropped then too. If it was as simple as using the slider more, it seems like the Nationals would have figured that out already, but maybe a different voice in his ear will help.
Another point of interest is that Finnegan’s fourseam fastball has progressively moved further up in the zone over the years, which feels smart for someone throwing upwards of 97. However, his whiff rate on the pitch has decreased, a rather strange development for Fetter to try and undo. For Finnegan to be anything more than another Brennan Hanifee caliber of reliever, figuring out how to either get more whiffs on the fastball or sequence around it by reintroducing his slider is a crucial first step.
As for the minor leaguers, neither Randall nor Sales is extremely highly regarded. Randall, Detroit’s 3rd rounder in 2024, was rated as a 35+ FV prospect and 32nd in their system by FanGraphs and 15th by MLB Pipeline. He draws praise for a hard sinker-slider combination but lacks either a third pitch or a dominant fastball to rely on as an impact starter. Instead, he seems likely to end up as an innings-eating backend starter or a medium-impact reliever. Sales was unranked at both FanGraphs and MLB after being selected in the 10th round last year and also struggled to generate whiffs in the low minors.
As he is, Finnegan is a small upgrade for Detroit. He’ll slot into the middle of a bullpen deep in adequate, but rather uninspiring arms, and give AJ Hinch another quality option to play matchups with. Essentially, Finnegan, Hanifee, Tyler Holton, Tommy Kahnle and Chase Lee provide AJ dealer’s choice in how to get from a starting pitcher to Will Vest. Coaxing a few more strikeouts out of an arm that has flashed top-end upside in the past would make this swap a bit more interesting from Detroit’s side.