Who’s performing in the Detroit Tigers minor league system?
Rogelio Castillo and Chris Brown of “The Detroit Tigers Minor League Report” share updates on injuries and player developments in the minor leagues
Detroit Tigers pitcher Reese Olson has only given up one home run in his first seven starts of the 2025 season.While other aspects of Olson’s pitching are around league average, his ability to limit home runs has been crucial for the Tigers.
In the bottom of the first inning in the third game of the Detroit Tigers‘ opening series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, starting pitcher Reese Olson gave up a solo home run to Dodgers’ first baseman Freddie Freeman, cutting the Tigers’ lead to 2-1.
To be fair, 267 major league pitchers have given up home runs to Freeman in his 16-year career, including five others this year. In that regard, Olson’s early mistake isn’t a particularly noteworthy event by itself.
What is noteworthy is that it’s the only home run Olson has given up through his first seven starts of the season.
Olson has always been skilled at keeping the ball in the ballpark. In his first season in 2023, he allowed 1.22 home runs per nine innings, right around the major-league average of 1.23 per nine. He more than halved that rate in 2024, allowing only 0.56 home runs per nine. And so far in 2025 he’s halved that rate once again, down to 0.23 per nine.
That amounts to just one home run allowed in his 38â…” innings pitched, that first-inning solo shot by Freeman on Olson’s 11th pitch of the season. And his homerless streak continued in Sunday’s 13-1 victory over the Los Angeles Angels at Angel Stadium in Anaheim.
Olson finished the game with zero runs allowed, three hits, three walks and eight strikeouts over 5â…” innings, all without allowing a home run for his sixth-straight start.
Only two qualified American League starters have a better home run rate than Olson so far in 2025: Tyler Mahle of the Texas Rangers (who hasn’t given up a home run over 37â…” innings pitched) and Hunter Brown of the Houston Astros. Jack Flaherty, who is one spot ahead of Olson in the Tigers’ rotation, has already given up five home runs in seven starts compared to Olson’s one, while ace Tarik Skubal has given up four.
So while no one would call Olson the best pitcher in the Tigers’ rotation, there is at least one important stat where he is on top.
A lot of that success limiting hard contact comes from Olson’s changeup, which has not only turned into his best pitch, but one of the most effective pitches in the entire Tigers’ rotation. In terms of Statcast’s offspeed run value, which ranks the effectiveness of offspeed pitches, Olson’s changeup lands in the 97th percentile among all MLB pitchers.
He showed that effectiveness on Sunday. According to Statcast, Olson threw his changeup 22 times, making up 23% of his pitch count. But he also got eight swings and misses on that pitch, which accounted for 57% of his total whiffs, while allowing only one ball in play on the changeup.
That’s just a continuation of the success he’s been seeing all year with the pitch, with opposing batters hitting just .063 against the pitch and swinging through it 53.7% of the time. He’s striking out batters 47.1% of the time on his changeup, which is the highest of any qualified pitcher according to Statcast.
Basically, it’s easy to keep the ball in the park if you’re not allowing contact in the first place.
And when Olson gives up contact, it’s usually on the ground. According to FanGraphs, Olson’s 53.4% ground-ball rate was the best among Tigers starters entering Sunday’s start and about 11 percentage points better than league average. It’s also the highest ground ball rate of his career, as Olson has figured out how to induce soft contact on his secondary pitches.
That’s a critical skill for Olson, because he’s pretty much a league-average pitcher in a lot of other ways. His ERA (3.03) and strikeout rate (9.31 per nine innings) are better than the MLB averages, while his walk rate (3.96 per nine) has risen considerably from his first two seasons. His sinker grades poorly according to Statcast (17th percentile among all MLB pitchers), which is a concern considering it’s his most-used pitch. But as long as Olson’s changeup keeps missing bats, he has a weapon that can carry him through any given start.
For a lot of MLB batters, the “all-or-nothing” approach has become the standard, with players swinging out of their shoes for a chance at a game-breaking home run. Olson has found success in his third MLB season leveraging that approach, getting batters to swing hard at changeups and sliders that dart out of the zone. And while the calendar just turned to May, and while Olson still has room for improvement, his homerless trend is helping keep the Tigers atop the AL Central standings.