Why Valdez Fits in Detroit
The Tigers’ rotation has been a strength, when healthy, over the past two seasons. Tarik Skubal is coming off back-to-back Cy Young seasons, Jack Flaherty has re-established his career, and Casey Mize has started to show his potential. Reese Olson and Jackson Jobe are budding young arms.
Although the rotation was strong on paper, there were two elephants in this room. First, many of those names have struggled to stay healthy. In fact, each of the past two seasons, the Tigers have been plagued with injuries to the point of trading for Charlie Morton and Chris Paddack, even going as far as making bullpen games routine.
Second, Skubal, Mize, and Flaherty are all set to hit free agency after this season. With so much of the rotation potentially departing, and still so many unknowns with the arms under team control, adding a veteran on a multi-year deal made complete sense.
The Tigers needed another high-end arm. Flaherty and Mize flash that ability at times, but when the playoffs come around, I think we’d all be lying if we said we had trust in either starting a big game. Valdez comes with proven playoff experience and World Series production.
Valdez became a full-time starter five seasons ago and has pitched to a 3.66 ERA or lower in each of those seasons. Over the past four years, he’s pitched over 175 innings each season, breaching 190 innings on three occasions. Skubal has pitched over 175 innings twice in his career, Flaherty once in 2019, and Mize has yet to reach that milestone.
We are talking about a pitcher that has finished in the top 10 of Cy Young voting three times. Yes, he’s 32 years old, but I think his profile will age well. He does not rely on high velocity but rather movement, with a sinker that helped him pitch to an elite 58.6% groundball rate in 2025. He’s not going to burn out and has proven, so far, that he can stay healthy.
Detroit needed another workhorse to pair with Skubal, and they got just that. A truly high-end arm that doesn’t come with justifications for why this season or that season went wrong. You won’t have to dance around numbers to explain Valdez’s production. Flat out, he’s been dominating the league since the jump.
Now, as Tigers fans look into the future past the 2026 season, they don’t worry nearly as much as they did 24 hours ago. Regardless of what happens to the three arms on expiring contracts, Detroit will have Valdez, Olson, Jobe, and Troy Melton as a starting point in 2027. Not too bad.