The Detroit Tigers went into Friday’s deadline to tender contracts to arbitration eligible players without too many question marks. The main one was whether utility infielder Andy Ibáñez would get a contract,
and as it turned out the club decided to non-tender him as predicted. The rest of their arbitration eligible players were tendered contracts for the 2026 season.
The Tigers also came to agreement with several players, thus avoiding arbitration. Matt Vierling agreed to a one-year deal worth $3.26 million, while catcher Jake Rogers signed for $3.05 million and reliever Beau Brieske, who spent much of the season on the injured list, agreed for $1.16 million in his first year of eligiblity. This doesn’t mean they’ll end up on the Opening Day roster. It simply sets the terms in advance.
With Ibáñez off the roster, the 40-man now stands at 39 players, so there’s a spot to add a free agent or even claim a player through the December 10 Rule 5 draft.
Ibáñez’s production really fell off in 2024-2025 and like most, we predicted the Tigers would non-tender him in his first year of arbitration eligibilty. After a nice year and a 103 wRC+ in 2023, he had plenty of big hits and a nice hot streak in 2024, but his numbers quickly cooled down and he ultimately put up an 86 wRC+ despite hitting mostly against left-handed pitching.
Things didn’t turn around this sseason, and Ibáñez is now 32 years old. As Jahmai Jones emerged in 2025 as a true lefty masher, he seized most of the at-bats that would’ve gone to Ibáñez. With two decent infield prospects who hit right-handed now in Toledo in the form of Hao-Yu Lee and Max Anderson, and a better right-handed bat available as a pinch-hitter in Justyn-Henry Malloy, it was pretty clear that Ibáñez’s days with the Tigers were numbered.
Still, we’ll always have Josh Hader. You can play in the major leagues for 15 years and still never have a single at-bat as impact as Ibáñez’s game winning, bases clearing double in Game 2 of the 2024 Wild Card series against the Houston Astros. For that alone we’ll always have a soft spot for Andy.
If this is the end of his MLB career, well he did pretty well after signing with the Texas Rangers as a 23-year-old only recently escaped from Cuba back in 2014. Ibáñez was named to Team Cuba in the 2013 World Baseball Classic, and as MLB games weren’t broadcast on the island at the time, it was his first experience seeing and meeting a lot of major league players.
“The first time I had the idea come into my mind, it was in the World Baseball Classic,” Ibáñez said. “We were playing in Japan. I was impressed by the way major leaguers played, so that’s how it clicked in my mind that I wanted to play here.”
Ibáñez seized his opportunity the next year while his team played in Haiti. With help, he crossed the border to the Dominican Republic and then trained there for eight month before signing a minor league contract with the Rangers. At the time, things were much tighter in terms of travel restrictions and he didn’t know when he would see his family again, but they were ultimately re-united and Ibáñez was able to move them to the States. That thawing of relations also allowed him to represent Team Cuba in the 2023 WBC, bringing it all full circle.
Andy Ibáñez has played 420 major league games with a career slash of .254/.305/.389, worth 3.6 fWAR, and it’s possible that this isn’t quite the end of the road for him in the big leagues.
