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Tigers Designate Six Relievers For Assignment

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The Tigers designated six relief pitchers for assignment: Dugan Darnell, Jack Little, Sean Guenther, Jason Foley, Tanner Rainey and Tyler Mattison. They added five prospects to the roster to keep them out of the Rule 5 draft: Hao-Yu Lee, Thayron Liranzo, Trei Cruz, Eduardo Valencia and Jake Miller. The sixth roster spot is filled by Gleyber Torres, who officially accepted the qualifying offer.

Liranzo, 22, isn’t too far removed from being one of the better catching prospects in the game. The Tigers landed him alongside Trey Sweeney in the 2024 deadline deal that sent Jack Flaherty to Los Angeles. He’d posted a .378 on-base percentage that season but dropped to a .206/.308/.351 slash line in 88 games with Double-A Erie this year. The Tigers weren’t going to jump ship after one bad year, but he may need to repeat Double-A.

Lee, a 22-year-old infielder out of Taiwan, came over from Philadelphia in the 2023 Michael Lorenzen deadline trade. He spent the entire season at Triple-A Toledo, where he hit .243/.342/.406 across 579 trips to the dish. He walked at a strong 11.2% clip while striking out 21% of the time. Lee can’t play shortstop and isn’t going to have a path to second base playing time behind Torres. His best chance of carving out MLB playing time in 2026 comes at third base.

Cruz gets a 40-man spot for the first time going into his age-27 season. The Tigers had left the former third-round pick unprotected in the past two offseasons. The switch-hitting infielder, the son of former big league outfielder José Cruz, earned his way onto the roster with a breakout year in the upper minors. Cruz hit .279/.411/.456 while leading all minor league hitters with 102 walks between the top two levels. The Rice product can play both left side infield positions and has the athleticism to play some center field.

Valencia is a 25-year-old catcher/first baseman who posted a monster .311/.382/.559 slash line between Erie and Toledo. He blasted 24 home runs while keeping his strikeout rate around 20%. The Venezuela native has never been viewed as much of a prospect, but the offensive performance in the high minors was too much to ignore.

Miller, a 24-year-old lefty, ranked 16th in the Detroit system at MLB Pipeline. An eighth-round pick in 2022 out of Valparaiso, he has shown an intriguing three-pitch mix with enough command and deception to project as a starter. Miller was limited to six starts between High-A and Double-A this year by a back injury, but Detroit likes him enough to keep him as a developmental play. He should begin next season in Erie.

Getting all those players onto the roster required cutting most of their depth relievers. Little and Darnell were just claimed off waivers. Detroit knew they’d be likely non-tenders but could try to bring them back on minor league deals. That’s also the case for Mattison, whom they kept out of the Rule 5 draft last winter but who had a middling year in the minors. Guenther has been up and down for the past couple seasons and missed the second half of 2025 recovering from hip surgery.

Rainey is a journeyman righty who cracked Detroit’s big league bullpen in the final week of the season. He’s narrowly shy of six years of service and therefore could have been retained via arbitration. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projected a modest $1.2MM salary, but Rainey is looking at minor league deals as a free agent.

Foley was probably the toughest cut. He’d been a valuable late-innings arm between 2021-24, a run which he capped off by saving 28 games last year. Foley missed all of ’25 recovering from shoulder surgery, and he would have been set to match this year’s $3.15MM salary if they tendered him a contract. They opted not to do so and are likely to cut him loose on Friday, though they have the next few days to see if there’s any trade interest.

Evan Petzold of The Detroit Free-Press first reported the Cruz, Valencia and Miller additions.

Gleyber Torres To Accept Qualifying Offer

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Infielder Gleyber Torres is going to accept the qualifying offer from the Tigers. Jon Heyman of The New York Post was among those to report the news. Torres will return to Detroit on a one-year deal worth $22.025MM.

Once Torres received the QO, it seemed like there was a decent chance of him accepting it, which is why we predicted he would do so as part of our Top 50 Free Agents list. Torres was a free agent a year ago. He reportedly received some kind of multi-year offer from the Angels but rejected it since he wanted to play for a contending club. The financial details of that offer from the Halos aren’t known. He eventually settled for a one-year, $15MM pact with Detroit.

He didn’t meaningfully increase his earning power during the 2025 season. He slashed .256/.358/.387 for a wRC+ of 113. That was better than his 2024 season, when he hit .257/.330/.378 for a 105 wRC+, but close to his career numbers. He now has a .264/.337/.433 line and 114 wRC+ for his career.

That 2025 production came in lopsided fashion. He had a .281/.387/.425 line in the first half but just a .223/.320/.339 showing in the second, leading to respective wRC+ figures of 131 and 88. He underwent sports hernia surgery after the season and said he had been playing through the injury for months, staying on the field because the club was in a playoff race. Presumably, that accounts for the reduced production.

Theoretically, getting back to full health could perhaps help him return to that first-half form when he was a substantially better hitter, but he’s also going into the offseason hurt. He isn’t expected to be hampered into next season and the Tigers felt good enough about his chances in 2026 to give him a bit of a raise. Perhaps some clubs out there were willing to pay him a bit more but they also would have been subject to penalties on account of the QO. We at MLBTR were considering predicting Torres for something like $40MM over three years before he received the QO.

Torres hasn’t played a position other than second base in over three years, so he’ll return to the keystone in Detroit for another year. Per RosterResource, they are now slated for a payroll of $146MM next year. That’s a bit shy of their year-end payroll in 2025, which was $155MM. It’s unknown how much they are willing to spend next year. They are a speculative fit for third baseman Alex Bregman but seem likely to focus on pitching pursuits.

Photo courtesy of Junfu Han, Imagn Images

Mets, Tigers, Giants Interested In Devin Williams

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The Mets have expressed interest in signing reliever Devin Williams, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN. The Tigers and Giants are also interested, per Jon Morosi of MLB Network. It had previously been reported that roughly a dozen teams were in on Williams, including the Red Sox, Reds, Dodgers, and Marlins. The Mets, Tigers, and Giants can now be counted among his suitors.

Williams, 31, is coming off an uneven season for the Yankees. The Brewers traded the star reliever to New York in exchange for Nestor Cortes, Caleb Durbin, and cash considerations in December 2024. At the time, he was long established as an elite closer, having posted a 1.83 ERA across 235 2/3 innings for Milwaukee from 2019-2024. In that time, his 39.4% strikeout rate and 27.6% K-BB rate were fourth- and fifth-best among qualified relievers, respectively. Though he did walk 11.8% of hitters in that span, the elite strikeout numbers were more than enough to compensate. All told, Williams was worth 7.6 fWAR during his time in Milwaukee, which placed sixth among qualified relievers. Ryan Pressly, who ranked fifth ahead of Williams, was worth 8.0 fWAR but pitched 74 more innings.

The Yankees were surely hoping for more of the same from Williams in his final year before free agency. Instead, he posted a 4.79 ERA in 62 innings while being shifted in and out of the closer role due to his performance. His first 12 games of the season were abysmal, as Williams struck out an uncharacteristically low 20.0% of hitters across March and April while walking 16.0% and allowing an opposing batting line of .300/.420/.400. The strikeout and walk numbers returned to normal the rest of the way, but Williams continued to post uneven run prevention numbers, with an ERA of 0.93 in June followed by ERAs over 4.90 in July and August, then settling down to 3.72 in September and October. Though his contributions were still worth 1.4 WAR according to FanGraphs, the bottom-line results were clearly not what Williams was hoping for in his platform season.

That said, he is still garnering a lot of interest, largely due to his excellent peripheral stats. Despite the below-average ERA, Williams still got strikeouts at a rate of 34.7% in 2025, which was tied for eighth-best among qualified relievers. His 9.7% walk rate, while still higher than league average, was actually his best mark since 2020 and down from 12.5% in 2024. He also continued to induce groundballs 44.6% of the time, above the league average of 42.3% for relievers. His expected stats, including a 3.07 xERA and a 2.95 xFIP, also paint a much better picture than just his ERA. In terms of stuff, Williams’s signature changeup remained a plus pitch by run value, while his four-seam fastball velocity only declined slightly from 94.7 mph in 2024 to 94.1 mph this year.

Those signs point to Williams still being an elite closer, so the high amount of interest is hardly surprising. Among the three new teams mentioned, the Mets are an interesting case. Their president of baseball operations, David Stearns, is familiar with Williams due to their shared years in the Brewers organization. The Mets bullpen ranked 15th with a 3.93 ERA and 13th with a 22.8% strikeout rate in 2025. Owner Steve Cohen is clearly willing to spend big, and the pressure to win will be higher in 2026 after a lackluster 83-79 season and playoff miss this year.

Meanwhile, the Tigers bullpen posted a 4.05 ERA (17th in the league) but an 11.3% K-BB rate that ranked 27th. The team surely wants to capitalize on Tarik Skubal’s final year of team control, so their interest in Williams makes sense. As for the Giants, their bullpen was slightly better than Detroit’s but still below-average with a 12.8% K-BB rate (20th) this year. We at MLBTR rated Williams as the 16th-best free agent this offseason and predicted that he will sign a four-year, $68MM contract.

Photo courtesy of Vincent Carchietta, Imagn Images

Tom Timmermann Passes Away

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Former big league pitcher Tom Timmermann passed away this past week at the age of 85, according to multiple reports. The right-hander spent parts of six seasons in the majors.

Timmermann was signed by the Tigers and made his pro debut in 1960 at the age of 20. He’d go on to spend nearly a decade bouncing around the minor leagues, working as both a starter and a reliever, until he eventually made his big league debut with Detroit on June 18, 1969. He recorded 1 1/3 scoreless innings in his debut to kick off what was a strong season out of the bullpen in his rookie year.

After pitching to a 2.70 ERA in 46 2/3 innings out of the bullpen, Timmermann made his first career MLB start in the penultimate game of Detroit’s season. He managed a complete game where he surrendered three runs to the Orioles but came away with the win after striking out future Hall of Famer Frank Robinson and teammate Boog Powell as they wrapped up brilliant campaigns that saw them both finish in the top 3 of AL MVP voting that year.

Even after his impressive finish to the 1969 season, Timmermann didn’t manage to break into the Tigers rotation right away. He spent the 1970 and 1971 seasons largely in the bullpen and pitched to roughly average results across 169 1/3 innings, though he did manage to record 31 saves along the way. In 1970, he set the team record for appearances by a pitcher with 61 and was named Tiger of the Year by Detroit’s chapter of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.

It was in 1972 when Timmermann finally got the opportunity to start in the majors on a regular basis. Then in his age-32 season, Timmermann started 25 of his 34 games that year and pitched quite well with a 2.89 ERA in 149 2/3 innings of work. It was a solid enough performance, but it wasn’t enough to earn the right-hander another look in the rotation for the 1973 season. The Tigers put him back in the bullpen, though Timmermann’s chance to start would later come at the cost of his roster spot in Detroit. On June 15, nearly four years to the day after his big league debut, Timmermann was traded to Cleveland in exchange for future All-Star Ed Farmer.

The move to an eventual 90-loss club in Cleveland allowed Timmermann the opportunity to start, but he didn’t do very well with the change of scenery. The right-hander pitched to a 4.96 ERA across 33 appearances for the franchise during the 1973 and ’74 seasons. The last game of his major league career arrived on April 26, 1974, when he threw 3 1/3 scoreless innings of relief and was credited with a win over an Angels lineup that coincidentally included Robinson. Timmermann pitched at the Triple-A level for the Toledo Mud Hens and Oklahoma City 89ers to close out his season before calling it a career after the 1974 season.

In all, Timmermann recorded a 3.78 ERA in 548 innings of work at the big league level across six MLB seasons. He posted an even 35-35 record with 35 saves recorded in that time, and struck out 315 batters throughout his big league career.  Though it wasn’t known until long after his big league career had come to a close, Timmermann was also the biological father of former big leaguer Phil Leftwich. Leftwich was born nearly a month to the day prior to Timmermann’s MLB debut but was put up for adoption as an infant, and the connection between the two wasn’t discovered until Leftwich (who pitched for the Angels in parts of three seasons from 1993 to 1996) was on the cusp of his own big league debut.

MLB Trade Rumors joins the rest of the baseball world in extending our condolences to Timmermann’s family, friends, and loved ones.

Tigers GM: “We’re Going To Prioritize Pitching”

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The Tigers have reached the postseason in consecutive seasons but still have plenty of work to do this offseason, with a number of key free agents reaching the open market. General manager Jeff Greenberg said at this week’s GM Meetings that the Tigers “are going to prioritize pitching” in the months ahead, even after Jack Flaherty’s decision to exercise his $20MM player option filled one rotation spot next season (link via Evan Woodbery of MLive.com). Greenberg added that the Tigers are open to further rotation additions and “certainly” need to address their bullpen.

As things stand, Detroit’s rotation lines up with Flaherty joining two-time Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal and righties Casey Mize and Reese Olson. Options for the fifth spot that are already on the 40-man roster include Troy Melton, Keider Montero, Sawyer Gipson-Long and Ty Madden. Righty Jaden Hamm, one of the organization’s top prospects, started 20 games in Double-A last year during his age-22 season and could push his way into the big league mix with a strong 2026 showing. Ballyhooed young righty Jackson Jobe could factor into the mix late in the season, but he underwent Tommy John surgery in mid-June and thus can’t be counted upon for any meaningful innings next year.

It’s a talented group overall, but there are question marks throughout. Mize and Flaherty both had some struggles down the stretch in 2025. Olson’s season ended in late July after just 13 (excellent) starts, as a shoulder strain sent him to the shelf for the remainder of the season. If each of Skubal, Flaherty, Olson and Mize is healthy and in peak form, the Detroit rotation would be among the best in the sport, but a World Series hopeful can’t necessarily afford to bank on that — particularly not as Skubal enters his final season of club control.

In the bullpen, Detroit’s need is more acute. Deadline pickup Kyle Finnegan was brilliant during his two-plus months as a Tiger but is now a free agent. Relievers Tommy Kahnle, Rafael Montero and Paul Sewald are free agents as well. Meanwhile, 2024 bullpen standouts like Beau Brieske and Jason Foley dealt with significant injuries. Brieske’s ERA nearly doubled, from 3.59 in 2024 to 6.55 in 2025. He was limited to 22 MLB frames and another 10 in the minors, and he ended the season on the 60-day IL owing to a forearm strain. Foley didn’t pitch at all in the majors and only logged 6 2/3 (scoreless) innings in Triple-A before undergoing season-ending shoulder surgery in May.

Detroit still has some quality arms in the relief corps. Will Vest posted a third consecutive strong season. Brennan Hanifee doesn’t miss many bats but is a hard-throwing grounder specialist with plus command. Southpaw Tyler Holton was effective again, albeit not to the same extent as in 2024. Fellow lefty Brant Hurter excelled in a multi-inning role. They’ll all be back, as will Foley and Brieske, and all six of those arms have minor league options remaining, too.

As with the rotation, it’s not necessarily that the Tigers are lacking in raw talent — just that the incumbent names have question marks stemming from a combination of health issues and lesser results in 2025 (relative to their strong 2024 showings, anyhow). Given that Detroit liked Finnegan enough to acquire him at the deadline and then saw him exceed even the most optimistic expectations following his change of scenery (1.50 ERA, 34.8 K%, 6.1 BB%), it stands to reason that they’ll have interest in retaining him at the very least. Other prominent names on the relief market include Edwin Diaz, Devin Williams, Robert Suarez, Brad Keller, Raisel Iglesias and Ryan Helsley.

Detroit clearly has other needs, though one such need would be answered if Gleyber Torres accepts their $22.025MM qualifying offer. That’d lock a quality option in at second base. Shortstop, third base and at least one outfield spot still stand as fair questions even in that scenario, however, and president of baseball operations Scott Harris spoke openly at his end-of-season press conference about wanting to cut down on his team’s swing-and-miss and improve the team’s contact. That has and will continue to lead to ongoing speculation about the Tigers revisiting last offseason’s pursuit of Alex Bregman, though there are myriad ways to go about achieving that goal if the team prefers to dedicate more resources to the pitching staff.

Currently, RosterResource projects the Tigers for a payroll just under $125MM. That’d jump to $147MM if Torres accepts his qualifying offer. That’s already higher than last year’s Opening Day mark, although by season’s end, after including deadline pickups, the Tigers had invested $155-160MM in the roster. They’ve also run payroll up to the $200MM range in the past, though that was back in 2016-17 under late owner Mike Ilitch. The Tigers haven’t returned to that level of spending under new owner Chris Ilitch (Mike’s son), though that’s at least partially due to the fact that much of his tenure as the team’s chairman has come during a rebuild. This offseason will serve as a good litmus test as to whether Chris Ilitch is comfortable investing as much into the team as his father was.

Of course, the source of intrigue surrounding Detroit’s pitching staff is Skubal’s future. It still seems overwhelmingly unlikely that he’ll be traded this offseason. Greenberg, as Harris has done previously, declined to speak about the possibility of a Skubal trade or extension when asked at this week’s meetings (link via Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free Press). Skubal, Petzold writes, acknowledged that he “loves the city of Detroit” and “wants to be a Tiger for a long time,” while in the same breath noting that any trade possibility is out of his control.

Meanwhile, agent Scott Boras held court with reporters yesterday for his annual GM Meetings media scrum. Asked about Skubal’s contract status, Boras merely stated: “Our point of view is we always listen. We’re prepared to listen to about anything that Chris or really Scott has to say. We’ll just see how it goes.”

Tarik Skubal Wins AL Cy Young Award

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For a second straight season, Tarik Skubal is the American League Cy Young award winner. He beat out Garrett Crochet and Hunter Brown, the other two finalists. Skubal received 26 of 30 first-place votes. The other four voters had him second behind Crochet, and those pitchers were 1-2 in some order on every ballot.

Skubal is the first pitcher to win back-to-back Cy Youngs since Jacob deGrom took the NL honors in 2018 and ’19. He’s the 23rd pitcher in MLB history to win the award twice. Skubal cemented himself as one of the two best pitchers on the planet by turning in a 2.21 earned run average across 31 starts. He recorded 241 strikeouts, 13 more than he did during last year’s award-winning season, and won a second straight ERA title.

The Tigers’ star southpaw was fourth in the AL in innings, second in strikeouts behind Crochet, and trailed only Logan Gilbert with a 32.2% strikeout rate (minimum 100 innings). Both FanGraphs and Baseball Reference credited him the most Wins Above Replacement of any AL pitcher. He also had the lowest FIP (2.45) and SIERA (2.71). He tied Brown and Bryan Woo for second in the league with 21 quality starts, one behind Crochet.

Skubal is headed into his final season of arbitration control. With no progress on a long-term extension, there’ll surely be teams trying to pry him out of Detroit. It’s very difficult to imagine the Tigers trading their ace on the heels of two consecutive playoff appearances, though. He’ll likely be back as A.J. Hinch’s Opening Day starter and go for a third consecutive AL Cy Young while trying to get Detroit back to October.

It’s the first top three finish for both Crochet and Brown. The Red Sox could not have asked for more out of Crochet in his first season in Boston. He led the AL in strikeouts and innings pitched (205 1/3) while pitching to a 2.59 ERA over 32 starts. This was only Crochet’s second season as a starting pitcher and his first logging a full starter’s workload. The White Sox had eased him back in the second half of the ’24 campaign to not put too much stress on his arm after years working in relief. He demonstrated he’s capable of maintaining his stuff and ace level over a full season with the Red Sox, who signed him through the 2031 season in April.

Brown’s top three placement earned the Astros an extra pick after the first round of the 2026 draft under the Prospect Promotion Incentive. Houston’s ace turned in a 2.43 ERA across 31 starts. He struck out a career-high 206 batters over 185 1/3 innings. This was Brown’s first time receiving any Cy Young votes. He’s entering arbitration and is under club control for another three seasons.

Voters unanimously had Skubal and Crochet as the AL’s best pitchers in some order. Brown was the consensus choice for third, receiving 24 of 30 third-place votes. The other six third-place nods went to Max Fried. Brown and Fried appeared on all but one ballot apiece. Woo finished comfortably in fifth. Carlos Rodón, Aroldis Chapman, Jacob deGrom, Trevor Rogers and Drew Rasmussen were the other pitchers to receive at least one vote.

Image courtesy of Stephen Brashear, Imagn Images. Full vote tally available via BBWAA.

Tigers Designate Alex Lange For Assignment

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The Tigers announced that they have claimed right-hander Dugan Darnell off waivers from the Pirates. The Bucs designated him for assignment last week. To open a roster spot for Darnell, the Tigers designated righty Alex Lange for assignment.

Lange, 30, is not too far removed from being Detroit’s closer. He notched 26 saves for the club in 2023. He pitched 66 innings that year, allowing 3.68 earned runs per nine. He struck out 27.4% of batters faced and got grounders on 50.6% of balls in play, though his massive 15.6% walk rate was worrisome.

The bottom fell out from there. His 2024 started out poorly. Through 18 2/3 innings, he had a 4.34 ERA. That wasn’t an atrocious jump but there were worse signs under the hood. His grounder rate fell to 45.8% and his strikeout rate to 23.3%. His walk rate, which was already awful, climbed to 18.9%. The Tigers optioned him to the minors in May of that year. A few weeks later, he suffered an injury and required lat surgery. He missed the final few months of the season and began 2025 on the 60-day injured list. He wasn’t reinstated from the IL until August.

A few days after coming off the IL, he was optioned to the minors and spent the rest of the year there. That burned his third option, meaning he will be out of options going forward. He’s also eligible for arbitration, with MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projecting him for a $900K salary next year. He was likely going to be non-tendered next week but the Tigers have instead bumped him off the roster today to make this claim.

Lange will be in DFA limbo for a week at most. The waiver process takes 48 hours, so the Tigers could take five days to explore trade interest. They probably won’t find much, given that Lange has been injured for most of the past two years. His work in Triple-A this year resembled his past self, not in a great way. He logged 23 1/3 Triple-A innings in 2025 with a 4.63 ERA, 29.6% strikeout rate and 54.7% ground ball rate but a 14.3% walk rate.

If he were to clear waivers, he would have the right to elect free agency. He doesn’t cost much and still has three years of club control, so perhaps some rebuilding club could take a shot on him and hope for a bounceback.

Darnell, 28, still has a limited track record. He made nine appearances with the Rockies in 2025, logging 11 2/3 innings. In September, he underwent surgery to address a torn left hip labrum. The timeline given at that time was eight months. The Pirates claimed him off waivers in October but have now lost him to the Tigers.

Since the major league track record is so shallow, the Bucs and Tigers were presumably more interested in his work on the farm. He has 255 1/3 minor league innings under his belt with a 3.74 ERA. That includes 53 2/3 Triple-A innings this year, in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League, with a 3.19 ERA, 28.8% strikeout rate, 8.7% walk rate and 43.5% ground ball rate. He can give the Tigers some extra bullpen depth whenever he has recovered from his hip surgery.

Photo courtesy of Charles LeClaire, Imagn Images

MLBTR Podcast: Surprising Option Decisions, Qualifying Offers, And Paul DePodesta

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The latest episode of the MLB Trade Rumors Podcast is now live on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts! Make sure you subscribe as well! You can also use the player at this link to listen, if you don’t use Spotify or Apple for podcasts.

This week, host Darragh McDonald is joined by Steve Adams of MLB Trade Rumors to discuss…

Check out our past episodes!

The podcast intro and outro song “So Long” is provided courtesy of the band Showoff.  Check out their Facebook page here!

Photo courtesy of Kiyoshi Mio, Imagn Images

13 Players Receive Qualifying Offers

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Thirteen players have received a qualifying offer this year, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN. The list is as follows:

This year’s QO is valued at $22.025MM. All 13 players will have until Nov. 18 to decide whether to accept that one-year offer or decline and become a free agent. They can spend that time gauging the open market to determine interest in their services. If a player accepts the QO, he’ll be treated as a free agent signing and thus will be ineligible to be traded without his consent until June 15 of next year. If he declines, any team that signs him will be subject to draft and/or international bonus forfeitures, depending on its revenue-sharing and luxury tax status.

The bulk of the list was generally expected. Every recipient other than Torres and Imanaga was pegged as likely or a no-doubter to receive the QO on MLBTR’s annual lists of qualifying offer previews for position players and for pitchers. Torres was viewed as something of a long shot, at least on the MLBTR staff. He’s coming off a nice season in Detroit but struggled through a poor finish — perhaps in part due to injury — and wasn’t hit with a QO last offseason when coming off a comparable year at the plate in the Bronx.

Imanaga was listed as a borderline call on our preview as well. The Cubs declined a three-year, $57.75MM option on Imanaga last week. He subsequently declined a $15.25MM player option (which came with an additional player option at $15.25MM) — effectively opting out of a remaining two years and $30.5MM. The Cubs are banking on Imanaga also turning away one year at just over $22MM after turning down that remaining $30.5MM in guaranteed money.

The qualifying offer is determined each year by taking the average of the game’s 125 highest-paid players. We’ve already covered the penalties that each team would face for signing a qualified free agent, as well as the compensation each club would get for losing a qualified free agent to another team.

Among the notable free agents to not receive a qualifying offer are Lucas Giolito, Robert Suarez, Devin Williams and Jorge Polanco. Giolito might have received one had it not been for a late elbow issue that ended his season. Suarez has been excellent and just opted out of the remaining two years and $16MM on his contract, but he’ll be 35 next year. The Padres have been reducing payroll in recent seasons and likely didn’t want to risk Suarez locking in that weighty one-year sum. Williams would have received a QO with a typical season, but he struggled throughout much of the season’s first four months before a dominant finish. Polanco enjoyed a terrific rebound campaign but is 32 years old and was limited to DH work for much of the season due to ongoing injury issues.

The qualifying offer grants each of these free agents the chance at a notable one-year payday, though the majority of them will reject without much thought. Players like Tucker, Bichette, Schwarber, Valdez, Cease, Suarez and Diaz are likely to see comparable or larger (much larger, in Tucker’s case) salaries on multi-year deals in free agency. Even players like Grisham, who probably won’t land a $22MM annual value over multiple years, are still likely to reject. Major league free agents typically — though not always — prioritize long-term earning over short-term, higher-AAV pacts. A three- or four-year deal worth $14-16MM per year, for instance, is typically viewed as preferable to accepting one year at a higher rate.

There’s risk in declining the offer, of course. Teams are more reluctant to sign players who’ll cost them valuable draft picks and/or notable portions of their hard-capped bonus pool for international amateurs. Every offseason, there are a handful of free agents whose markets are weighed down by the burden of draft pick compensation. That typically applies to the “lower end” of the QO recipients. For top stars like Tucker, Bichette, etc. — draft/international forfeitures are simply considered the cost of doing business and don’t tend to have much (if any) impact on the player’s earning power.

Tigers Claim Jack Little

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The Tigers announced that they have claimed right-hander Jack Little off waivers from the Pirates. It was reported earlier this week that the Pirates had put him on the wire. The Tigers had an open 40-man spot, though the roster is now full.

Little, 28 in January, was a fifth-round pick of the Dodgers in 2019. He worked his way up the minor league ladder and reached the big leagues in 2025. The Dodgers called him up in June, though he was mostly kept on optional assignment. He was designated for assignment in August and was claimed by the Pirates, who also kept him in the minors.

To this point, Little has just three big league innings under his belt, having allowed two earned runs. The Tigers are presumably putting more weight in his minor league track record. In 2024, he tossed 57 innings on the farm, split between Double-A and Triple-A. He had a combined earned run average of 3.79 while striking out 26.6% of batters faced and limiting walks to a 6.8% clip. His results in 2025 weren’t quite as strong. He logged 62 Triple-A innings with a 4.06 ERA, 20.2% strikeout rate and 8.4% walk rate.

Despite the numbers backing up this year, the Tigers will give him a roster spot for now. Little still has options and can be kept in Triple-A as depth. It’s also possible they try to pass him through waivers later in the winter to keep him as non-roster depth.

Photo courtesy of Jayne Kamin, Oncea-Imagn Images

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