In Search of Closer, Detroit Opts for Classic Muscle

If the Tigers make the postseason for a third consecutive year in 2026, they’ll have a closer with plenty of experience. Kenley Jansen is bound for Detroit on a one-year, $11 million contract with a club option for 2027.

Jansen, 38, is just about the most experienced relief pitcher on the market. He leads all active relief pitchers in regular-season appearances, innings, strikeouts, and saves; in the postseason, he’s second all-time, behind Mariano Rivera, in all of those categories as well. At his peak, Jansen was the Dodgers’ late-inning enforcer, posting sub-2.00 ERAs and pairing strikeout rates in the 40s with walk rates under 5%. And just like Rivera, he did it all using a cutter and little else.

Peak Jansen, of course, was about 10 years ago. This version of Jansen is joining his fifth team in six seasons, having bounced from Los Angeles to Atlanta to Boston and back to Los Angeles (specifically, Los Angeles of Anaheim, as we used to call it), and now all the way up to Detroit.

You understand why the Tigers are doing this. Tyler Holton is a good multi-inning guy, and Will Vest is a high-leverage weapon. Other than that, Detroit’s bullpen has been a little wobbly in the postseason the past two years. That’s why the Tigers traded for Kyle Finnegan in July, then re-signed him last week. But when it comes to battle-tested relievers, more is always better.

Jansen, despite being old enough to know how to make a mixtape, was pretty good in 2025. He posted an 8.1% walk rate (his lowest since 2019), held opponents to a .173 batting average, and dropped his ERA from the mid-3.00s to 2.59. He saved 29 games in 30 chances, which is no small feat considering the Angels won only 72 games in total. That save total means Jansen has saved 25 or more games every year since 2012, the pandemic-shortened 2020 season excepted.

That’s a level of consistency you don’t find often at any position, let alone the one Jansen plays. A closer usually has the life expectancy of a guy who juggles sticks of dynamite for a living. Nevertheless, Jansen’s game has evolved; the cutter has been his most-used pitch every season of his career, but he started to diversify his repertoire in the late 2010s, going to a sinker and a slider. I always thought the latter was very pretty, but its effectiveness came and went. Jansen also changed his arm angle, going from one of the most vertical release points in baseball — he made Trey Yesavage look like Brad Clontz — to a more conventional three-quarters delivery.

In 2025, Jansen pitched from a high three-quarters arm slot, but he committed to playing the hits: 81.5% cutters. No other pitcher with at least 50 innings threw more than 58.2% cutters this past season. Only Tim Hill’s sinker and Tommy Kahnle’s changeup dominated a pitcher’s repertoire to such an extent.

But it’s not quite the same pitch it was five years ago. The velocity of Jansen’s cutter is still 92-93, but it used to have both plus rise and elite glove-side movement. It was the cutteriest cutter you could find.

The cutter Jansen threw in 2025 had more neutral lateral movement, but truly wicked rise: 18.8 inches of induced vertical break, five inches more than any other cutter in the league.

He still throws his sinker a couple times an outing; that has similar vertical movement, but with arm-side run. These pitches are built to get under barrels, if not miss the bat altogether; Jansen had the fifth-lowest groundball ratio among qualified relievers in 2025. This is not the guy you bring in with a guy on first to get a double play.

Jansen does, however, free up Vest — with his top-10 groundball rate — to be the guy who comes in with a runner on first to get a double play. In 2024, when Jason Foley got most of the saves for the Tigers, Vest entered with at least one runner on base 35 times in 69 appearances. In 2025, Vest entered with traffic on the bases just 17 times in 64 appearances, as he held down the closer role for most of the year. Jansen, who’s been a closer since Four Loko was fun, entered only five of his 62 games with traffic on the bases in 2025.

You can see the Tigers’ bullpen shaping up: Jansen for clean save opportunities, Vest as the fireman, Finnegan for setup situations, Holton for lefties and multi-inning bridge work. It’s not the Nasty Boys, or the 2015 Royals, but it’ll work.

At least, it should. Because I do have one or two reservations. Jansen’s 2.59 ERA is great by almost anyone’s standard, but both his FIP and his xERA were more than a run higher; he outpitched his xwOBA by 54 points — a difference of 18%. He also ran his lowest strand rate since 2017; that was the year he posted a 1.32 ERA and a 15-to-1 K/BB ratio, so obviously nobody who got on base was headed anywhere.

Jansen’s minuscule opponent batting average is mostly his own work, as he held opponents to a .215 xBA, but he also ran a .195 opponent BABIP. That was the lowest mark in the league in 2025, and one of the 30 lowest of the 21st century by a reliever with at least 50 innings pitched. And while Jansen cut his walks down, his strikeout rate went down even more, to a career-low 24.4%.

If these aren’t red flags, they are definitely orange flags, if such a thing exists. And I bring this up not because I want to pour cold water on the Tigers’ big signing, or because I’m licking my chops waiting for the downfall of this future Hall of Fame closer. It’s because I’ve been burned before, and I want to prevent others from making the same mistake.

About a year ago, the Dodgers spent a lot of money on a geriatric Millennial closer, Kirby Yates, who’d just run a 1.17 ERA (but with way better underlying numbers than Jansen’s) and a .168 opponent BABIP. Yates quadrupled his ERA in one extremely poor season in Los Angeles, and ended the season hurt and below replacement level. Closers in their late 30s can collapse in a hurry; you need to keep your head on a swivel.

So while I believe Jansen can do a job for the Tigers, who need all the help they can get, he would not have been my first choice on how to spend $11 million in the relief pitcher market this winter. Our Top 50 Free Agents list had the big man ranked no. 42 overall, and expected him to earn $9 million over one year.

I’m willing to call $11 million with a club option close enough, especially in a market where — as I mentioned in the post about Gregory Soto — every reliever contract seems to be coming in high by a couple million dollars. But if I were Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris, and I had about $11 million to spend on a ninth-inning guy, I would’ve gone with Emilio Pagán, who went back to Cincinnati for two years at $10 million per. I’d much rather have had Robert Suarez or Devin Williams at $15 million a year.

Of course, the tricky thing about free agency is that the players get to choose where they play. Would Pagán have moved all his stuff for the same amount of money when he’s already comfortable in Cincinnati, and pitching for a team with a similar competitive situation? Probably not. The Tigers were better than the Braves in 2025, but not for several years prior to that, and people seem to love playing in Atlanta; it might’ve taken much more than three years and $45 million to tempt Suarez to Detroit. And while Williams might come to regret subjecting himself to the ludicrous media scrutiny that comes with playing for the Mets, the pizza is a million times better in New York than Detroit.

So while Jansen isn’t the ideal ninth-inning guy for a playoff team, at least at this point in his career, maybe this is the best the Tigers could do with what they had. Based on the previous 15 years of baseball history, he’ll probably be fine.