Scott Harris has a bullpen problem on his hands, and the numbers make it hard to argue otherwise.
Detroit’s relief group didn’t just spring leaks this season - it kept handing away games the Tigers should have had locked up. The club finished tied for fourth in baseball with 44 blown leads, and it also ranked seventh in the majors with six blown leads in the ninth inning. It’s easy to pin plenty of that frustration on Kenley Jansen, but the larger issue was the entire bullpen, which repeatedly failed to finish.
The clearest sign of how costly those losses were came when the season ended Sunday. The Tigers posted the best run differential in the AL Central at +71, well ahead of the Chicago White Sox at +56.
Cleveland won the division at just +11, a total that would normally feel impossible for a club taking the title. Detroit’s +71 was also good for fourth-best in the American League, which makes the final result sting even more: the Tigers are staying home in October after finishing eight games out of a Wild Card spot.
That gap looks even stranger when stacked against the rest of the league. No team with a run differential of at least +30 is missing the playoffs this year. Meanwhile, the Guardians are sitting at +11, the Phillies at +15, and the Houston Astros won the AL West despite a playoff field-worst -32.
The comparison gets even more jarring from there. The Oakland Athletics won just 12 fewer games than Detroit while carrying a -238 run differential. The Cincinnati Reds, with a -160 run differential, finished with only one fewer win than the Tigers.
So yes, the story is simple enough: the bullpen blew it.
Detroit’s relief corps wasn’t a complete statistical disaster on paper. It finished with a 3.82 ERA and a 1.26 WHIP, numbers that put it in the middle of the pack rather than the basement.
That’s not what doomed the Tigers. What did them in was how often that group failed in the biggest moments.
The Tigers lost more than 20 games after leading through seven innings, went 5-7 in extra innings, and finished 17-27 in one-run games. They didn’t necessarily have the worst bullpen in the sport, but they had the least clutch one, and that was enough to sink a playoff team in disguise.
Even a modest improvement would have changed the picture. If Detroit had won just half of those games it was leading after seven innings and lost, it would have won the division by at least one game and been playing for a World Series in October.
In Other News...
Tigers Offseason Reset Starts With A Staff Shakeup Fans Will Notice
After a 2026 season that left the Tigers 10 games under .500 and fourth in the AL Central, the first signs of the offseason reset are already showing up on the staff side. Detroit moved on from assistant pitching coach Juan Nieves and first base coach Anthony Sanders as its initial changes of the winter, even though the club has not formally announced the decisions.
It is the kind of early housekeeping that usually signals more than just a pair of departures. The Tigers spent part of the season reshaping the roster by trading Tarik Skubal to the Dodgers at the deadline and also dealing Casey Mize, so the next phase now looks aimed at the dugout and the coaching room as much as the clubhouse. With Skubal's future in Detroit already a topic of speculation, the organization appears to be entering a winter where familiar names may not be done with the franchise, even if the staff around them keeps changing. [Read more 🡒]
Tigers Face One Pitching Decision That Could Reshape Their 2027 Staff
The Tigers already have one eye on how their pitching picture could look beyond the next season, and two club options after 2026 will force an early look at what they value most. Drew Anderson, who settled in as a starter after the trade deadline and gave the staff a real boost, carries a $10 million option for 2027, while Kenley Jansens $12 million option sits on the other end of the spectrum as the club weighs a veteran closer with declining production.
Anderson is the easier decision to map out, because his late-season work gave Detroit a legitimate reason to think of him as part of the future rotation. Jansen presents the more complicated call, even if the direction seems obvious on paper: the Tigers are likely to favor continuity where it has helped and move on where age and performance are working against the return. [Read more 🡒]
Tigers Face A Tough Roster Call As Young Talent Pushes Through
The Tigers are in that familiar offseason spot where upside and practicality are colliding, with the front office sorting through a roster that still needs help in the bullpen and among the position players as it looks ahead to 2027. At the same time, several arbitration-eligible pieces are under the microscope, including Matt Vierling, Zach McKinstry and Wenceel Prez, as Detroit weighs performance against roster space in what shapes up as a tricky set of decisions.
Elsewhere in the system, the organization has begun lining up the next wave of options, with Brett Callahan, Ben Malgeri, Max Anderson and John Peck all mentioned as possible future contributors. For a club trying to build a deeper, more flexible roster, the question is no longer just which veterans to keep in place, but how much room to preserve for younger players forcing their way into the conversation. [Read more 🡒]