The veteran reliever is still punching a lot of tickets, but he’s currently injured and has had home run issues this year.
The Detroit Tigers continue to shop the bargain bin. Chris McCosky broke the news on Thursday morning that the club has acquired veteran right-handed reliever Paul Sewald from the Cleveland Guardians . Sewald is currently on the injured list with a shoulder strain and not expected to be healthy until September so this is really just a depth building move and will only cost a player to be named later or cash considerations.
The initial shoulder strain put him on the injured list in late April, and after returning briefly for four appearances in July, Sewald had the injury flare up again.
The 35-year-old reliever has had a pretty solid run over the last decade as a setup man. He typically punches out close to 30 percent of hitters faced with a low walk rate. The issue keeping him from reaching another level is a vulnerability to the long ball. Because his fourseamer is typically 91-93 mph, his mistakes get whacked more than a power reliever with more margin for error.
Sewald is exclusively a fourseam-sweeper pitcher. He has a 60-40 split in usage with those two offerings. The fastball has good ride and draws a solid rate of whiffs at 27 percent. The sweeper is a really legit bat misser with a whiff rate a touch over 37 percent. Essentially this profile makes him something of a right-handed hitter specialist, though he actually did better against lefties for once this season.
Sewald’s 2025 numbers don’t mean much, as he only threw 15 1⁄3 innings before suffering the shoulder injury. His fastball velocity was down a mile per hour from 91.4 mph last year to 90.3 in 2025, presumably from the developing shoulder trouble. That, plus the small sample size, explains his 1.76 HR/9 rate this year, but Sewald has always given up some home runs. That flaw has kept him from ever establishing himself as more than a setup option.
This is another move without any cost, and the Tigers will be able to stash Sewald away as a little insurance for someone like Chase Lee. That leaves them with plenty of space to go get someone who is actually good should they choose to do anything more notable.
Matt Manning has been designated for assignment to open a 40-man roster spot. The former first overall pick has been in decline the past few seasons after peaking as a prospect in 2020-2021. An attempt to convert him to relief this year has produced the usual inconsistent results and the DFA was not at all unexpected.
The trade deadline is 6:00 p.m. ET on Thursday. The Tigers are still being linked to numerous other pitchers, so we’ll see what else they have in store today.