Tigers Activate Sawyer Gipson-Long
June 4: The Tigers announced Gipson-Long’s activation today. Righty Dylan Smith was optioned to Triple-A Toledo as the corresponding active roster move. To open a 40-man spot, righty Jason Foley was recalled and placed on the major league 60-day IL. Foley underwent season-ending shoulder surgery in May while on optional assignment. Due to this move, he’ll get major league pay and service time while spending the rest of the year on the IL.
Foley came into this year with his service time clock at three years and 33 days. He should finish this season at 3.149, give or take a day. The Tigers can now retain him via arbitration through the 2028 season. However, he’ll be a non-tender candidate at the end of this year due to his health status. He is making $3.15MM this year and shouldn’t be able to push that any higher due to his injury absence.
June 3: The Tigers will activate Sawyer Gipson-Long to start tomorrow’s game against the White Sox, manager A.J. Hinch told reporters (including Evan Petzold of The Detroit Free-Press). He’ll be reinstated from the 60-day injured list, which will require a 40-man roster spot. The Tigers don’t have an obvious candidate to move to the 60-day IL. They’ll likely designate someone for assignment tomorrow.
Gipson-Long will take an MLB mound for the first time since September 2023. He injured his elbow last spring and required an internal brace UCL surgery. Knowing he’d miss the entire season either way, he also underwent a labrum repair on his left hip over the summer. He’ll make his return a little more than 13 months after the elbow procedure. He has taken the ball five times on a rehab stint going back to May 8. He reached 5 1/3 innings and 53 pitches during his final appearance with Triple-A Toledo last week.
Now 27, Gipson-Long has four MLB starts to his name. Those all came at the end of the 2023 season. He pitched well over 20 innings, working to a 2.70 ERA while striking out nearly 32% of opponents. It came against a soft slate of lineups, but it would have put him in the mix for the fifth or sixth spot on the rotation depth chart last year had he been healthy.
Injuries to Reese Olson and Jackson Jobe have opened that opportunity for now. Detroit has Tarik Skubal, Jack Flaherty, Casey Mize and Keider Montero operating as their top four at the moment. Veteran righty Alex Cobb recently began a rehab assignment; he’s been out all season with a hip issue.
Tigers Place Jackson Jobe On IL With Flexor Strain
The Tigers announced that they have placed right-hander Jackson Jobe on the 15-day injured list due to a grade 1 flexor strain in his right elbow. Righty Dylan Smith was selected to take his place on the roster, a move that was previously reported. Righty Alex Cobb was transferred to the 60-day IL to open a 40-man spot for Smith.
The news on Jobe doesn’t completely come out of nowhere. After Wednesday’s game, Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free Press noted that Jobe’s velocity was down a bit. Jobe wasn’t in the clubhouse to talk to reporters after the game and the Tigers even closed the clubhouse while reporters were waiting to speak to him within an hour of the game ending, which Petzold noted was a violation of MLB club and media regulations. The club hasn’t provided a timeline for how much time they expect Jobe to miss, though it’s always at least somewhat concerning when a pitcher’s throwing elbow is injured.
Either way, this IL stint interrupts his first extended look in the big leagues. A former third overall pick and one of the top prospects in baseball, he hasn’t quite hit his stride in the majors yet. He made a brief debut late last year and earned a rotation job here in 2025. He has made ten starts this year with a 4.22 earned run average, 17.9% strikeout rate, 12.4% walk rate and 43.2% ground ball rate.
Those aren’t exactly dominant numbers but Jobe is still quite young. He won’t even celebrate his 23rd birthday until July. The fact that he’s in the majors at all at this age is a testament to his talent. There’s still lots of time for him to fully break out and the injury perhaps provides an explanation for why he hasn’t quite been firing on all cylinders yet.
For now, the Tigers will have to fill his rotation spot. Chris McCosky of Detroit News suggests that Sawyer Gipson-Long is a likely candidate to take over for Jobe. Gipson-Long underwent internal brace surgery in April of last year. He is now healthy enough to have made five rehab starts, getting to 5 1/3 innings in his most recent outing. Prior to going under the knife, he made four starts for the Tigers in 2023 with a 2.70 ERA. He is on the 60-day IL so the Tigers would need to open a 40-man spot if he is to be reinstated in the coming days.
As for Cobb, this move doesn’t impact his timeline. His 60-day count is retroactive to his initial placement on the 15-day IL. Since he’s already been on the shelf more than 60 days, he’s eligible to be reinstated at any time. Dan Hasty, broadcaster for the High-A West Michigan Whitecaps, relays that Cobb is expected to start a rehab assignment with that club tonight. Cobb will surely need a few weeks of ramp-up after missing so much time. He’s been out all year due to right hip inflammation.
Photo courtesy of Junfu Han, Imagn Images.
Tigers To Select Dylan Smith
The Tigers are calling up righty reliever Dylan Smith, as first reported by Tigers Torkmoil. He is not on the 40-man roster. Detroit already has an opening in that regard, so they’ll only need to make an active roster move involving a pitcher tomorrow.
It’s a nice birthday gift for Smith, who turned 25 yesterday. He’s in his fourth professional season. A third-round pick out of Alabama in 2021, Smith struggled early in his minor league career while working as a starter. That was partially due to injury, mostly forearm and shoulder issues. Detroit moved him to the bullpen this year as a result.
Smith has quickly found upper minors success while working in shorter stints. He posted a 1.80 ERA with a massive 37% strikeout rate through 20 innings at Double-A Erie. Smith climbed to Triple-A Toledo last week. He’s only pitched twice, firing 2 1/3 scoreless frames while punching out five of eight opponents. He’s averaging 94 MPH on his fastball in his Triple-A work.
Baseball America did not include Smith among Detroit’s top 30 prospects over the winter. Eric Longenhagen and James Fegan at FanGraphs placed him 35th in the system in their write-up during Spring Training. FanGraphs credited Smith with a plus slider and good life on his fastball.