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Matt Manning is taking his talents to Asia.
The Samsung Lions of the KBO League in South Korea have signed Manning – a former top-100 prospect who pitched in four MLB seasons with the Detroit Tigers – to a one-year, $1 million contract for the 2026 season.
Six and a half years ago, the Tigers selected Manning – whose father, Rich Manning, played two NBA seasons in the mid-1990s – with the No. 9 overall pick in the 2016 draft out of Sheldon High School in Sacramento, California.
“This is my first experience with Asian baseball,” Manning, who turns 28 in late January, said Sunday, Nov. 30, in a news release. “I’ve heard from my teammates in the U.S. that it’s definitely not an easy league. I want to adapt quickly to the Samsung Lions and show the fans my best.”
In recent history, pitchers such as Merrill Kelly, Chris Flexen and Erick Fedde have improved overseas in the KBO League, then returned to the United States as successful MLB starters.
Manning could become the next success story.
Over his four-year MLB career in Detroit, Manning posted a 4.43 ERA with 85 walks and 178 strikeouts across 254 innings in 50 starts. The 6-foot-6 right-hander didn’t pitch in the big leagues in 2025 for performance reasons, spending the entire season in the minor leagues.
He throws five pitches: four-seam fastball, sweeper, curveball, splitter and slider.
Manning failed to reach his top-prospect potential after making his MLB debut for the Tigers in June 2021. He ranked as highly as the Tigers’ No. 1 prospect in 2017 and MLB’s No. 24 prospect in 2020, according to MLB Pipeline.
In late July 2025, the Tigers designated Manning for assignment and traded him to the Philadelphia Phillies.
In return, the Tigers received outfielder Josueth Quinonez – an 18-year-old right-handed hitting outfielder in the Dominican Summer League – from the Phillies. After the trade, he hit .136 with three walks and four strikeouts in nine games.
Quinonez projects to advance to the Florida Complex League in 2026.
The Tigers attempted to convert Manning to a reliever in 2025, but the experiment didn’t work. He recorded a 6.47 ERA over 55â…” innings in 33 games (six starts) between Triple-A Toledo with the Tigers and Double-A Reading with the Phillies.
He had a 6.04 ERA in 31 games with the Mud Hens.
Manning’s ERA ranked 208th among 254 pitchers with least 50 innings at the Triple-A level. He also ranked 246th with a 15.9% walk rate and 109th with a 22.4% strikeout rate.
Manning made his last MLB appearance May 19, 2024, allowing four runs on 10 hits and three walks with one strikeout across five innings in a 6-4 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Contact Evan Petzold at epetzold@freepress.com or follow him @EvanPetzold.
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