Rumor fly fast and furious this time of year, and with the owners planning to lockout the players on December 1, cutting off free agency until a new collective bargaining agreement is reached, things have gotten off to a fairly speedy start. Of course, a rumor of interest could come from an agent trying to drum up interest in their client, or from a lower ranking executive just generally mentioning a player as being a fit. None of this means there’s a signing imminent, but BBWAA writer Francys Romero
noted recently that the Tigers have shown interest in right-handed reliever Raisel Iglesias. That’s pretty vague, so I wouldn’t get too sold on the likelihood of a deal, but we’ll explore it anyway.
The 36-year-old right-hander has racked up 130 saves for the Atlanta Braves over the last four seasons. His recent peak was the 2024 campaign in which he posted a 1.95 ERA with a 2.65 FIP and was among the most valuable relievers in baseball. He hasn’t been quite that sharp the past two seasons, but he’s still a very good reliever and would immediately become the Tigers’ top dog.
Iglesias has had a much wilder ride than most major leaguers. A budding young closer on National teams for his native Cuba, Iglesias was caught fleeing through the mountains to try and defect. He was detained briefly but upon release escaped again and made his way to Haiti. A tryout in 2023 in Mexico City convinced the Cincinnati Reds to offer him a seven year deal worth $27 million. They tried to convert him into a starter in 2015, but abandoned that project the next season and he played out his contract with excellent success until he was traded to the Angels in 2020. They subsequently dealt him to Atlanta, where he played the past four seasons. Last year, the Braves signed him again to a one year, $16M deal and he made the All-Star gave for the first time in 2026.
Iglesias has since put together a decade plus of good to great relief work with rare consistency. In all that time, he’s posted an ERA over 2.75 just twice. Basically, he keeps the walks down, strikes out an above average percentage of hitters and doesn’t have a notable issue with giving up home runs.
From 2020-2022, Iglesias hit a peak where he was sitting 96 mph and punching out over 30 percent of hitters he faced. He was never quite in the elite class, but he was certainly among the nastiest relievers in the game. Now he’s just plain nasty, but it’s still plus stuff with good command. He features one of the best changeups in baseball and it’s a time tested weapon at this point.
Iglesias sits 94-95 mph these days and mixes plenty of sinkers in with his fourseam fastball, which is his primary pitch. It’s a pretty unique set of fastballs in that neither pitch moves that much, but from a funky, low three-quarters, short arm slot, they’re really hard to differentiate for hitters. Add to that a changeup that looks exactly the same as the fourseam-sinker combo and then disappears, and you have a pitcher that really baffles hitters, gets whiffs, and rarely allows them to land their A swing.
The fly in the ointment is that Iglesias will be 37 next year, and if you’ve read my concerns about Emilio Pagán, well Iglesias is better but the same fears as velocity declines and mileage adds up are present. We’ll leave it at that. The Tigers have had no luck at all with older free agent pitchers.
Iglesias would fulfill the Tigers desire for a high leverage reliever who can handle either-handed hitters. He’s tougher on lefties, but handles right-handers just fine too. He does occasionally break out his slider against right-handers, and while he only used it 7.5 percent of the time last year it’s still a solid pitch in its own right. The changeup is just the monster weapon in this repertoire, and might help Iglesias to continue to age well despite losing a full mile per hour off his fastball over the past two seasons. So far he’s held up pretty well. It’s probably wise to expect at least a little continued decline, but even so he’ll likely be the Tigers best right-handed arm unless peak Will Vest returns or River Ryan or another starter converts and dominates.
The other problem, is that while the Atlanta Braves went and spent bigger than expected to land RHP Evan Phillips, they may very well turn right around and offer Iglesias another deal. The Tigers are just interested. Probably a lot of teams are interested. The crop of good relievers this offseason isn’t exactly huge, and several names are off the board already. At this point I’d be pretty happy to land Iglesias but there is probably going to be a fair bit of competition for him now.
Right now, I’d probably put a low likelihood of this rumor turning into Raisel Iglesias to Detroit. If only because there are no particular ties to the Tigers for Iglesias. Ben Clemens of FanGraphs suggests he’ll get a one-year deal for $13 million, but also suggests that a lot of teams will be in on him. Those two things aren’t really compatible. If the Tigers want him, something like two years, $24 million might be what it would take. Some certainty for a player as a very uncertain offseason begins might be the ticket to luring him to pick the Tigers over the one year, $16 million that seems likely. We’ll see if they want him quite that much.
