{"id":629133,"date":"2026-03-18T01:07:54","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T01:07:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/629133\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T01:07:54","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T01:07:54","slug":"red-sox-sign-tommy-kahnle-to-minor-league-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/629133\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Sox Sign Tommy Kahnle To Minor League Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Red Sox reached agreement with veteran reliever\u00a0Tommy Kahnle<\/a> on a minor league contract, reports Jon Heyman of The New York Post<\/a>. The Covenant Sports Group client will presumably be in camp as a non-roster invitee. Ari Alexander of Boston 7 News<\/a> reports that the deal comes with a $1.5MM base salary and $250K in bonuses if he reaches the MLB roster.<\/p>\n

Kahnle spent the 2025 season in Detroit on a $7.75MM free agent deal. It didn\u2019t pan out as the Tigers envisioned. The right-hander allowed a 4.43 earned run average while striking out only 18.7% of opponents, easily a career low. The drop in production really came in the second half. Kahnle took a 1.77 ERA and solid 23.3% strikeout rate into July. He was blitzed for nearly eight runs per nine innings while walking more batters than he struck out the rest of the way.<\/p>\n

There wasn\u2019t any kind of dramatic drop-off in Kahnle\u2019s stuff \u2014 not that hitters weren\u2019t fully aware what was coming either way. Kahnle throws his changeup more than 85% of the time. That\u2019s the highest rate in MLB by a mile.\u00a0Devin Williams<\/a> was the only other pitcher to throw a changeup (which is how Statcast buckets his trademark \u201cAirbender\u201d) at least half the time. Williams went to that pitch at a 52% clip.<\/p>\n

Kahnle has had success with this approach for years, so it\u2019s not as if hitters suddenly caught onto the pattern at last season\u2019s All-Star Break. They did a better job laying off when he threw it out of the zone, though, leading to a drop in whiffs and a spike in walks down the stretch. The Tigers continued to use Kahnle in reasonably high-leverage spots and pitched him four times in eight playoff games. He gave up three runs (one earned) on five hits and two walks across 2 1\/3 innings in October.<\/p>\n

Although he\u2019s signing just over a week from Opening Day, the 36-year-old Kahnle should be ready for the beginning of the season. He pitched in the World Baseball Classic for Israel, tossing two scoreless innings with a pair of strikeouts. The Sox have seven more Spring Training contests before heading to Cincinnati to open the regular season on March 26.<\/p>\n

The timing of the signing probably isn\u2019t a coincidence. Kahnle was an Article XX(b) free agent because he finished last season on Detroit\u2019s major league roster. Those players receive automatic opt-out chances five days before Opening Day, May 1 and June 1 if they sign a minor league contract at least 10 days before the start of the regular season. Assuming Kahnle\u2019s deal didn\u2019t become official until today, he won\u2019t meet that criteria. His camp could have negotiated separate opt-out dates into the contract, but there\u2019s a decent chance he\u2019ll open the season at Triple-A Worcester.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Red Sox reached agreement with veteran reliever\u00a0Tommy Kahnle on a minor league contract, reports Jon Heyman of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,4,1091],"class_list":["post-629133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-tommy-kahnle"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116247507998596487","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}