The Tigers are heading into an offseason where two bullpen decisions will tell you a lot about how they view 2027. One looks like a straightforward keep. The other feels like the kind of move a front office makes when it’s ready to turn the page.
Detroit has until five days after the 2026 World Series to sort out club options, and the two pitchers on that list sit on opposite ends of the spectrum. Drew Anderson has made a strong case to stay. Kenley Jansen, despite the name value, has not.
Anderson’s path back to the majors already made him an interesting bet when Scott Harris brought him in on a two-year deal after four seasons in Japan and Korea. The former 21st-round pick in the 2012 MLB Draft by the Philadelphia Phillies started his Tigers run in the bullpen, then got pushed into the rotation after the MLB Trade Deadline.
That change suited him much better. He finished with a 3.97 ERA and 114 strikeouts in 108 innings.
For a Tigers staff that needed more depth and a bullpen that struggled, Anderson’s $10 million club option for 2027 looks like the kind of decision that lines up with both performance and roster need. Harris even pointed to the value of finding a player outside the usual channels.
"Having a versatile arm like that is really valuable. I'm not going to forecast what we're going to do with the option moving forward. But I think you know our scouts, our analysts, our front office did a really good job of identifying a talent sort of away from the conventional streams of acquisition in the winter and forecasted how that was going to adjust to here," Harris said of Anderson in his end-of-season assessment.
Jansen’s situation is much less complicated. Detroit gave the veteran closer a one-year, $11 million deal, and Spotrac.com says he was paid $9 million in 2026. The club now holds a $12 million option for 2027, with a $2 million buyout attached if it walks away.
That buyout is the easier price to stomach. Jansen blew six saves, gave up seven home runs, and walked 22 batters in 45 innings.
At 39, he’s not the kind of arm Detroit should be leaning on for the ninth inning moving forward. The Tigers need a closer either entering or already in his prime, not one they have to keep hoping can survive the late frames.
If Detroit declines Jansen’s option, Will Vest should be back for 2027, giving the club another chance to sort out the back end after a shaky 2026.
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Detroits relief group was not a disaster across the board, posting merely average ERA and WHIP marks, but the clutch issues were impossible to escape. Games the Tigers led after seven innings and one-run decisions piled up into the kind of losses that can sink a season, and it left a roster with enough overall quality to compete still searching for the answers that separated a good year from a playoff one. [Read more 🡒]