With Chris Paddack Trade, Tigers Bolster Ailing Rotation and Twins Start Selling

The Tigers didn’t wait long. On Monday, the team announced that starter Reese Olson would miss the rest of the season (and possibly the postseason) with a right shoulder strain, and that same day, Detroit filled Olson’s rotation spot by swinging a trade within the division for Minnesota right-hander Chris Paddack. The full deal brought Paddack and reliever Randy Dobnak to the Tigers in exchange for 19-year-old catching prospect Enrique Jimenez. The trade represented an attempt to stabilize an increasingly banged-up Detroit rotation for an increasingly important stretch run. For the Twins, the move kicked off what has the potential to be a significant sell-off.

We’ll start with the Twins side. “It’s just crazy how fast it can turn around,” Paddack told Dan Hayes of The Athletic, who initially reported news of the deal along with Ken Rosenthal. “World just got twisted upside down, to say the least. It stinks. This business is out of our control sometimes. I was really pulling for us, as a Twin. I was hoping we would make some moves and go get that Wild Card spot. I’m excited for this new opportunity with a new team.” It’s not immediately clear who will take Paddack’s spot in the Minnesota rotation. The Twins have a bullpen game planned for today. Paddack will start tomorrow, and he’s lined up to face his old squad when the Tigers and Twins face off a week from today. The Twins broadcast made a point of circling the date on the calendar during last night’s game.

Paddack was well-liked in the Minnesota clubhouse, and Twins fans will be sad to see Dobnak and his majestic facial hair depart. ESPN’s Jeff Passan first reported that Dobnak was also in the deal. The right-handed reliever is a favorite who clawed his way back to the majors in 2024 after three years toiling in the minors, but his inclusion in the trade was almost certainly a salary dump. He’s made just one appearance with the Twins this season and has a 7.12 ERA in Triple-A St. Paul. He has around $1 million left on his contract this season and a $1 million buyout on a $6 million option for 2026. Getting rid of him saved the Twins $2 million. In all, the Tigers took on roughly $4.6 million in salary.

Robert Murray of FanSided was first to report Jimenez as Minnesota’s return in the deal. The Venezuelan-born catcher will turn 20 in November, and before the trade, he was running a 119 wRC+ with six home runs over 48 games during his second season in Complex League play. Eric Longenhagen and James Fegan ranked him 28th in the Detroit system back in March. With 50-FV catchers Thayron Liranzo and José Briceño ranked third and fourth, the Tigers won’t lose sleep over losing Jimenez. However, the Twins didn’t have a catcher ranked among the top 20 of their list, so although Jimenez won’t be playing for Minnesota any time soon, he does fill an organizational need. Eric and James put a 35+ grade on Jimenez in March, and Eric confirmed that he has the same grade on the catcher now. He added: “Advanced, high-effort defense and a good arm (Jimenez will pop sub-1.90) anchor his profile. He’s also a great in-the-box decision-maker and swings pretty hard for a squat 5-foot-9 guy, but catchers of Jimenez’s stature tend to be limited to second- or third-catcher duty. Mechanical concessions Jimenez must make to swing hard portend more strikeouts down the line. He’s a smart, anticipatory hitter without prototypical physicality or athleticism.”

Whether this starts a full-scale sell-off for Minnesota remains to be seen. The team itself is in the process of being sold, and it’s hard to know how that will affect the decision-making of president of baseball operations Derek Falvey. A dramatic ninth-inning comeback on Monday night pushed the Twins to 51-55, 10 games back of the Tigers and five games out of the last Wild Card spot. We currently give them a 16% chance of making the playoffs, and trade rumors are swirling around outfielder Harrison Bader and utilityman Willi Castro in particular. Lefty reliever Danny Coulombe has had an excellent season, and first baseman Ty France and catcher Christian Vázquez are on expiring contracts. After the Paddack trade, you have to assume that the team will look to unload all of them. The real question now is how hard the Twins will sell. They could trade excellent pitchers like Joe Ryan, Jhoan Duran, Griffin Jax, and Brock Stewart, all of whom are about to enter their second year of arbitration.

The Tigers rotation hasn’t been at full strength all season. Alex Cobb hasn’t pitched at all due to pain in both hips, and he just received another cortisone injection over the All-Star break. Jackson Jobe underwent Tommy John surgery in June. José Urquidy hasn’t pitched since 2023 after his own Tommy John surgery. He threw his first live batting practice session last week, and he looks likely to start a rehab assignment toward the end of August. Olson represents a big loss. Over 13 starts, he has a 4.15 ERA and 3.45 FIP, and he ranks third on the staff with 1.3 WAR.

Detroit starters rank among the top six staffs in the majors in ERA (3.53), FIP (3.57), xFIP (3.61), and WAR (10.2), but those numbers are goosed by the presence of reigning and presumptive future Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal. With a 3.40 ERA and 3.78 FIP, Casey Mize is putting up the best season of his career, but Jack Flaherty has struggled to a 4.51 ERA and 4.13 FIP this year. Olson and Jobe are the only other Tigers with more than 10 starts. Most recently, starts have gone to Keider Montero, who has a 9.53 ERA over his last three appearances, and to rookie Troy Melton, who has run impressive numbers in the minors and grades out well according to pitch metrics, but who also made only eight appearances in Triple-A before his two major league starts.

So far this season, Paddack has showed the ability to patch a hole in the rotation, but not much more. Over 21 starts and 111 innings pitched, he’s running a 4.95 ERA and 4.40 FIP. At Twins Daily, Matthew Trueblood even floated the possibility that the Tigers could use Paddack out of the bullpen. Paddack looked like a potential ace during his rookie season with the Padres in 2019, but he has struggled both to stay healthy and to regain that form, especially since the 2022 trade that sent him to the Twins. This is just the third time he’s reached 20 starts or 100 innings in a season. He hasn’t put together a 15-game stretch with an ERA below 3.40 since 2020. At 45.7%, Paddack has the seventh-highest fly ball rate of any qualified pitcher, so the fact that Comerica Park is less homer-friendly than Target Field should help his stuff play up, but he’s by no means a sure thing. As you’d expect for a middling fly ball pitcher, Paddack has had an up-and-down season.

After struggling mightily in his first two starts, he reeled off an 11-game stretch in which he posted a 2.25 ERA and 3.60 FIP. However, he was also running an xFIP of 4.25, and the stretch bore all the hallmarks of unsustainability. Over his past eight starts, Paddack has a 7.49 ERA, 4.68 FIP, and 4.53 xFIP. You could argue that he has been a bit unlucky over that stretch, but his overall numbers this season probably reflect who he is right now. When the ball is flying, things can go bad in a hurry. When it’s not, he’s great. He’s allowed two or fewer runs while pitching at least five innings 12 times this season. Only 35 pitchers can say the same, and only six of them have surpassed 15. However, he also ranks toward the top of the league in terms of starts with more than four runs, five runs, and six runs allowed. Maybe that’s how the Tigers will view Paddack, a coin flip who’s just as likely to deliver a shut-down performance as he is to blow up in their faces.

Still, Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free Press gave the move a D+, and if it’s the only addition the Tigers make to their rotation, you can understand his thinking. Detroit has gone 3-12 over its last 15 games, but even after that slide, the team is nine games up on the second-place Guardians, and we currently have the Tigers with a 93.2% chance of winning the Central. They were already up so far ahead of the rest of the division that the current skid has hardly affected their playoff odds, but their chance of clinching a first-round bye has fallen from 87.2% to 56.7%. They no longer have the best record in either the majors or the AL. In the race for the second bye, they’re just one game ahead of the Astros in the loss column.

Maybe the Tigers see something in Paddack that they can improve, or perhaps they’re putting a lot of faith in park factors, but his stuff has graded out as below average even after he brought back the sinker he threw in 2023. If he just keeps doing what he’s doing, he probably won’t crack the postseason rotation behind Skubal, Mize, Flaherty, and either Olson, Cobb or Melton. A couple weeks ago, it would have made no sense at all to add Paddack. Now, it looks like he’s only here to help hold onto that first-round bye. But if the Tigers were going to shell out money and a prospect for a starter, why not get someone who could be more helpful down the stretch and help them in the playoffs? Rentals like Adrian Houser and Merrill Kelly have been better than Paddack and are making less money. They would have cost more, but they also could have helped a lot more. This is a perfectly defensible move and it doesn’t preclude further additions. But it would be really disappointing to see a Tigers team that looked so exciting last October and dominated for much of this season settle for half measures.