Detroit – Here’s the $9 million question:
Will Kenley Jansen, baseball’s active saves leader, be the Tigers’ closer in 2026?
Maybe. Maybe not.
“That’s up to AJ to figure out,” said president Scott Harris, who officially announced the signing of Jansen in a Zoom call Wednesday.
Manager AJ Hinch prefers not to put his relievers in specific boxes with specific labels and roles. But Jansen, 38, has been a highly-decorated closer for 14 of his 16 big-league seasons and he enters the season just 24 saves shy of 500.
Only Hall-of-Famers Mariano Rivera (652) and Trevor Hoffman (601) have surpassed the 500-save plateau.
“I know (500 saves) is important to him, and it should be,” Harris said. “It’s an incredible achievement.”
According to Harris, Jansen had a conversation with Hinch prior to signing the one-year, $9 million deal with the Tigers, which includes a $12 million club option for 2027 with a $2 million buyout.
“From that conversation, we learned Kenley is all about winning,” Harris said. “He’s willing to pitch in any spot. He just wants to be in a winning environment. He was really attracted to Detroit as a destination and it’s a huge step forward for this organization to be able to court a future Hall-of-Famer like him.”
Jansen will join right-handers Will Vest (23 saves last season) and Kyle Finnegan in the back end of the bullpen next season. If Hinch stays on brand with his bullpen usage, all three will likely get save opportunities depending on various matchups throughout the game.
“What we do know about Kenley, he is unburdened by pressure or big spots,” Harris said. “He’s done it his entire career. It’s my job to give AJ as many options as possible for the big spots in the game. We will have multiple options for the biggest spots in the game.”
Harris said the Tigers unsuccessfully tried to acquire Jansen from the Angels at the trade deadline last season.
“Kenley is one of the best to ever do it,” Harris said. “He brings experience. He brings a ton of success in the highest-leverage moments of games in the regular season and postseason. Also, when you drill down to his performance last year, you notice he missed a lot of bats in the (strike) zone, which is still a skill he has because of the unique shape he has with his cutter.
“He makes hitters uncomfortable.”
From June 24 on, Jansen pitched in 36 games, posted a 1.11 ERA, 0.65 WHIP and a .366 opponent OPS.
“He got off to a little bit of a slow start by his standards,” Harris said. “But the velocity on his cutter started to tick up (to 93 mph) and from that point he was dominant down the stretch.”
Jansen’s cutter, which he throws 80 percent of the time, continues to be one of the most unique and effective pitches in the game. By the end of last season, he was getting a 30% swing-and-miss rate on cutters in the strike zone. Over the final three months, hitters were 8-for-77 against the cutter with 19 strikeouts.
“It’s a power cutter and he fills the zone with it,” Harris said. “You watch the at-bats and you notice how the cutter makes hitters uncomfortable. It does different things than they expect. It’s a vertical cutter with late glove-side movement and it’s really hard to find. It’s one of the reasons he’s going into the Hall of Fame.
“He has a unique shape that makes the hitters uncomfortable.”
He’s not a one-trick pony, though. He also throws a firm, two-seamer that runs arm-side and a curveball that breaks sharply down. It’s a mix that Harris and Hinch believe will complement Vest and Finnegan in leverage situations.
“It gives AJ opportunity to match those guys up with different pockets of hitters in the same series,” Harris said. “Especially like a four-game series when we’re using our high-end relievers three times or more. The opportunity to throw different arms at the same pocket is going to be an advantage for us.”
The Tigers are still waiting on the results of Finnegan’s physical but are expecting his contract to become official by the end of the week (two years, $19 million).
In addition to bullpen holdovers Tyler Holton, Brant Hurter, Beau Brieske, Brenan Hanifee, Bailey Horn, Dylan Smith and Drew Sommers, Harris has brought back Sean Guenther, Jack Little and Tanner Rainey on minor-league deals, as well as signing Cole Waiters to a minor-league deal.
And Harris isn’t done.
“We hope by the end of the week we’ll be staring at a bullpen with at least three or four viable closer types,” Harris said. “Which is a great start. We needed to add to our pen. I don’t know if the heavy lifting is done. We’re going to keep adding to our team.
“I think we have a really good team right now, a really balanced team, a team with a lot of depth. A team that can beat opponents in a number of different ways. I like the pen as it is right now and we’re going to continue to find ways to make it better.”
@cmccosky