The Tigers have started their offseason by moving on from two assistants, parting ways with assistant pitching coach Juan Nieves and first base coach Anthony Sanders, according to The Athletic. The team had not formally announced the moves.
Nieves had been in the organization since 2019, when he joined Triple-A Toledo as pitching coach before moving up to the major league staff in 2021. His departure comes after a season in which Detroit’s pitching problems were impossible to ignore, especially in the bullpen.
The relievers’ ERAs may not have been eye-catching in the worst way, but the blown saves told the real story. Kyle Finnegan failed to convert a save in 10 of his 12 chances, while Drew Anderson blew six, Will Vest seven, and Kenley Jansen another six.
Detroit’s season never got back on track after that. The club, which entered the year with World Series expectations and a strong lineup to pair with Tarik Skubal, ended up selling at the trade deadline. That led to Skubal being sent to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
By the time the season ended, the Tigers were 10 games under .500 and fourth in the AL Central.
The bullpen wasn’t the only area needing work. The starting rotation has also been thinned out, with both Skubal and Casey Mize no longer in the organization after being dealt at the deadline. There have been whispers that Skubal would like to return to Detroit, but that would come at a steep price, and the Tigers may not be able to cover every need if they pour too much into one move.
For now, the coaching changes are the first clear sign of an offseason reset in Detroit, and they may not be the last.
In Other News...
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 🡒]
Tigers Kept Giving Away Games That Should Have Sent Them To October
The Tigers season ended with a frustrating contrast that is hard to ignore: a team that spent much of the year looking like a playoff club in the standings behind the numbers, but not in the moments that mattered most. Their run differential suggested a roster good enough to belong in October, yet the late innings kept turning into trouble, with the bullpen repeatedly putting leads at risk and narrowing the margin for error.
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 🡒]