The Detroit Tigers’ brass said all throughout the past week that they were heavily in pursuit of more pitching. They’ve signed Drew Anderson and Kyle Finnegan already, and on Saturday, Red Sox beat writer
Chris Cotillo broke the news that the Tigers and veteran closer Kenley Jansen have agreed on a one-year deal, pending his physical. Jeff Passan reported that there is a one-year club option attached, though the terms of the contract haven’t been released yet.
The long-time closer for the Los Angeles Dodgers from 2012-2021 has been more well-traveled the past few years. He spent a year with the Atlanta Braves in 2022, and then two years with the Boston Red Sox before heading back out west to pitch for the Angels in 2024.
Jansen will someday enter the Hall of Fame as one of the greatest closers of all-time. He stands at 476 saves heading into what will be his age 38 season in 2026. That ranks him fourth of the all-time saves list behind Lee Smith, who is only two ahead and will be caught this year, and Trevor Hoffman (601 saves) and the mighty Mariano Rivera (651 saves).
Of course, Jansen is now moving into the downside of his career.
He was good for Boston in 2023-2024, putting up a 3.44 ERA/3.30 FIP with a 28.1 percent strikeout rate, and collecting 56 saves over those two seasons. In 2025, his underlying numbers slipped as the strikeout rate dropped to 24.4 percent and a spike in home runs bit him at times. Even so, he posted a 2.59 ERA/3.98 FIP with 29 saves and only one blown opportunity over59 innings of work, and he hasn’t ever had a serious injury since breaking into the majors back in 2010. So he’s still a pretty good pitcher, just not the dominant ace reliever he once was.
Like Rivera, Jansen’s ticket to success has been a really difficult to hit cut fastball. Jansen has never thrown very hard, averaging 92-93.5 mph throughout his career. That velocity actually ticked up a bit in 2025, so there are no signs that he’s due to crumble at this point. Physically, he’s pretty close to peak form, and the cutter is still a very effective pitch despite everyone knowing what’s coming. We’ll see if the Tigers have any wrinkles they want to add to the mix.
Back in 2020-2022, the Dodgers and the Braves had him starting to throw more sinkers, though the cutter was still comfortably his primary pitch. Those seasons were good, but the sinker wasn’t especially helpful, and over the past three years he’s gone back to using the cutter over 80 percent of the time. He’ll throw a sinker or a slider occasionally, but for the most part the cutter just remains a pretty dominant offering, inducing a solid amount of whiffs and a whole lot of weak contact.
If there’s an issue building here though it’s that Jansen is giving up more and more fly balls, and in 2025 at least, got a lot less of them as pop-ups or lazy fly balls than he used to. Comerica Park will be a good place to pitch for him, but with the fences moved in, Comerica isn’t anything special in terms of home run prevention and is a pretty neutral park overall.
On the other hand, the Tigers are better run than the Angels, and do a lot more effective job game planning and coordinating their defense and plan of attack for each hitter. It’s not a big surprise that Jansen’s worse season came with them last year. Is he just getting old? Sure, but there’s no sign of it in his velocity or command grades at this point.
Hopefully that can get him back to limiting home runs a little more, because that’s the fear in bringing Jansen on at this point in his career. His 1.22 HR/9 rate in 2025 was the highest he’s had since the 2018-2019 season, while the league average for relievers was 1.08 HR/9. Of course, he’s had trouble with homers in certain seasons in the past and then turned around the next year and limited them yet again, so 2025 could well be another blip on the radar. Physically, Jansen is in good shape and throwing harder than he did in some recent seasons, but it’s never been about velocity with him to begin with.
The Tigers landed the most experienced and effective reliever in the game here. So it’s just a question of how much he has left in the tank, and whether he’ll fit into the Tigers’ bullpen usage. Jansen doesn’t need to worry about his save totals at this point in his career. The Hall of Fame is a lock, and he’ll take over third on the all-time list with just three more saves. That should be easily accomplished. Catching Hoffman would require another 125 saves, so it’s arguably out of reach, and either way it isn’t going to change his career arc either way. He’ll be in Cooperstown eventually, so we can hope that the Tigers haven’t just guaranteed him all the save chances.
If Jansen is willing to pitch in some different scenarios and not work exclusively as their closer, this is a pretty good acquisition. If bringing him on limits A.J. Hinch’s ability to use his bullpen with some flexibility, that may cut into some of that overall value. Still, if all Jansen does for the Tigers is close out games, allowing them to use Will Vest, Kyle Finnegan, and the rest of the pen in more of the matchups format we’ve seen from Hinch in setting up the late innings, that’s still an improvement.
It will be wild to see Jansen’s famous hesitation move in a Tigers’ uniform. For 16 seasons he’s been one of the most recognizable and certainly successful closers in the game’s history. He has a wealth of knowledge and a good reputation as a leader, which should be a minor asset to a still somewhat inexperienced Tigers bullpen. Scott Harris and Jeff Greenberg never seemed likely to shell out starter money for an Edwin Diaz or Devin Williams, but in adding Kenley Jansen they have another quality reliever who brings a lot to the table.
