To no one’s surprise, Scott Harris identified high leverage relief help as his primary focus this offseason during interviews with the media at the GM Meetings in Las Vegas on Tuesday. This was always going to be a priority for a Tigers club that woefully underperformed in 2026, largely due to the bullpen’s performance in high leverage situations holding leads or ties in the late innings. The simplest way to improve the situation is to go out and add a really good reliever who generates a lot of whiffs.
Longtime Dodgers reliever Evan Phillips may fit the bill perfectly.
The 32-year-old Phillips is a free agent for the first time this season. He was the 17th round pick of the Atlanta Braves back in 2015, and broke into the big leagues with them in 2018. Phillips was traded that year to Baltimore, and spent the next few years bouncing back and forth between the minor and major leagues. He struck out a ton of hitters, but his control was still a work in progress and the walks got him returned to Triple-A again and again. After a brief stop as a waiver claim with the Tampa Bay Rays, he was DFA’d again and claimed by the Dodgers in 2021. For the next three seasons he was one of the better setup men in the game as the Dodgers got him throwing strikes with a lot more consistency.
In June of 2025, Phillips blew out his UCL and didn’t return to action until July of 2026. When he got back on the mound, his velocity returned to peak form and he was throwing plenty of strikes. He was bit by too many home runs, but the strikeout and walk rates were outstanding. Phillips is a prime target for me this offseason, but he’ll be aggressively pursued as teams love a stuff guy who returns from Tommy John looking strong.
The 31.1 percent K-rate and 5.7 percent BB-rate stand out as the primary appeal here, but the stuff under the hood is really good to back up the numbers. Phillips will mix in a cutter or sinker here and there, but he’s primarily a fourseam-sweeper pitcher. He averaged 96.9 mph on the fourseamer in 2026 with a very good 26.3 percent whiff rate. The pitch has pretty pedestrian movement, but the velocity and command help it to play up. His 86.2 mph sweeper racked up a 34.3 percent whiff rate and remains an outstanding weapon. Hitters batted .059 against it in 2026, and while it will get smacked if he hangs one occasionally, that was a rare occurrence in 2026 and even more rare from 2023-2025.
The one problem appears somewhat glaring but was really more of a fluke. Phillips has never had notable home run trouble, but his 1.73 HR/9 mark this season is a bit grizzly. This doesn’t bother me. He’s never had home run trouble before, and the stuff was better after the surgery than in the two years prior. He only threw 26 innings, and he gave up five homers. Four of them came in a two week span in July right as he returned, and he only allowed one more home run from late July until the end of the season. This is a very small sample of work and shouldn’t be an issue next year.
Ben Clemens at FanGraphs estimates Phillips will get two years, $20 million total on a free agent deal. I tend to think the number will be a little higher than that, but he’s worth it. Add Phillips to a group including Drew Sommers, Will Vest, and one of the Tigers current starters, and you have a pretty strong backend of a bullpen.
