The Angels have recalled left-hander Reid Detmers to the major league roster to fill one of the spots created by today’s roster expansion, as first reporter by Russell Dorsey of Yahoo Sports.
Detmers, 25, hasn’t pitched in the majors since early June after being optioned to Triple-A following a brutal start to the season that saw him post a 6.14 ERA and 4.40 FIP in his first 12 starts of the season. The lefty has worked to a lackluster 5.54 ERA in 14 starts at the Triple-A level since then, but has shown signs of life recently with a 1.29 ERA and an eye-popping 36.3% strikeout rate in 21 innings of work across his last three starts. That trio of dominant performances was evidently enough for the club to decide to return him to the majors for the stretch run in hopes he can re-establish himself as a quality big league rotation arm ahead of the 2025 campaign.
From a service time perspective, Detmers’s demotion lasting most of the year has allowed the Angels to lock in an additional year of team control over the southpaw, who now won’t become a free agent until after the 2028 season has concluded. Prior to this season, the tenth-overall pick in the 2020 draft had already made 58 starts in the big leagues across three seasons but had accrued just over two years of service time. He’s currently set to accrue just over three months of service time this year, a figure that will put him just under the 172-day threshold to earn a full service year even after factoring in the 64 days toward his third year of service he entered the campaign with.
With the left-hander now back in the majors, the Angels have six healthy rotation arms in the fold as Detmers joins veterans Tyler Anderson and Griffin Canning as well as youngsters Caden Dana, Jack Kochanowicz, and Samuel Aldegheri. Detmers, Dana, Kochanowicz, and Aldegheri all would make sense to retain as the Halos evaluate their young talent ahead of a 2025 season that could see any number of them pitching in the Opening Day rotation, while Tyler Anderson’s status as the club’s veteran workhorse with a 3.55 ERA in 162 1/3 innings of work this year makes him all but guaranteed to remain in the rotation down the stretch.
It’s fair to wonder if those realities indicate that right-hander Griffin Canning is running out of time as a member of the club’s rotation, particularly given his lackluster 5.19 ERA and 5.17 FIP in 144 innings of work this year. With that being said, however, Rhett Bollinger of MLB.com noted yesterday that the club is considering utilizing a six-man rotation down the stretch instead of bumping any of their current starters out of the rotation to accommodate Detmers. The Halos famously used a six-man rotation regularly from 2021 to 2023 to accommodate the needs of two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani, but the club indicated this winter after Ohtani departed for the Dodgers that they intended to return to a traditional five-man rotation now that they weren’t accommodating the needs of a generational talent.
Despite that reluctance, it could make some sense for the Angels to utilize a six-man rotation down the stretch. After all, it would allow them to work in some extra rest for arms like those of Anderson and Canning that have taken on fairly heavy workloads this year without kicking them to the bullpen, and it could provide flexibility for the club as they look to evaluate their young arms ahead of the 2025 campaign. Most importantly, today’s expansion of rosters from 26 to 28 players means the club has an extra pitcher to work with, so a six-man rotation wouldn’t require the club to play a man short in the bullpen.