Jack Flaherty Returns to Detroit on Two-Year Deal

A key piece of the 2024 Detroit Tigers reunited with the team on Sunday, as starting pitcher Jack Flaherty signed a two-year deal worth $35 million. Flaherty excelled for the Tigers last year, putting up a 2.95 ERA and a 3.12 FIP in 106 2/3 innings over 18 starts, good for 2.1 WAR. With the Tigers seemingly out of the playoff race in July, he was shipped to the Dodgers, with whom he won the World Series. He was respectable over 10 regular-season starts with Los Angeles, but his performance was decidedly mixed in the postseason.

Like many short-term contracts for solid players, this deal comes with its own ifs, ands, and buts. Flaherty’s guaranteed money is front-loaded, structured as a one-year, $25 million deal with a player option for $10 million in 2026 that increases to $20 million if he starts 15 games in 2025. Whether one sees the deal as a two-year contract with an opt-out or a one-year contract with a player option is a “potato, po-tah-to” issue that really doesn’t matter here; in this case, they’re the same functional thing.

What does matter is that Flaherty’s market appears to not have developed as much as that of some of the other top pitchers available. While it shouldn’t raise an eyebrow that Blake Snell and Corbin Burnes got much bigger contracts, Flaherty also received a lighter deal than Sean Manaea, Nathan Eovaldi, and Luis Severino. While Flaherty didn’t miss any significant time due to injury last year — he skipped only a single start with lower back pain in July — questions about his back were enough for the Yankees to have second thoughts about trading for him at the deadline. The Dodgers were happy enough to acquire him, and though his strikeout rate dropped off (32% to 26%), he was certainly a net plus for an injury-thinned starting staff down the stretch.

Both Michael Rosen here and our friend and former FanGrapheteer Mike Petriello have written a lot about Flaherty’s market lately, speculating into some of the reasons for his quiet market. I suspect that the questions about his late-season decline would be easier for teams to dismiss if he had possessed a stronger record of consistent performance in recent years.

In 2019, Flaherty broke out as one of the best young pitchers in the game; he posted a 2.75 ERA, a 3.46 FIP, and 4.7 WAR across 196 1/3 innings, placed fourth in the Cy Young voting, and received down-ballot MVP votes. But then he struggled with injuries and up-and-down effectiveness over the next four seasons (4.42 ERA/4.36 FIP), including the truncated COVID one. He started strong in 2021 (2.90 ERA/3.73 FIP) before straining his oblique while batting during his May 31 start against the Dodgers. He spent 73 days on the injured list, returned for three starts in August, and then strained his right shoulder and missed another month. That shoulder continued to bother him in 2022. He was out until mid-June with shoulder bursitis and a SLAP tear in his labrum, made three starts, and then landed on the IL for another 70 days with a shoulder strain. He was healthy in 2023, and after a rough first seven starts (6.29 ERA/5.32 FIP), he pitched well for his final 13 starts with the Cardinals (3.58 ERA/3.69 FIP) before he was traded to the Orioles at the deadline. But then the rails fell off; he was demoted to the bullpen and finished his Baltimore tenure with a 6.75 ERA and 4.84 FIP.

Those are the reasons to worry about Flaherty, but there certainly are reasons to like him too. His 194 strikeouts and 38 walks last year represent a nice ratio, and he’s essentially been healthy for two full seasons now. The drop-off in strikeouts was more dramatic than you’d expect from the mild deterioration in his contact percentage, and his repertoire data didn’t indicate any game-changing problems. His knuckle curve, a big part of last year’s success, was as good as ever. If you simply ignore four months of really awesome performance and just look at his Dodgers performance prorated over a full season, he still was an above-average pitcher in 2024, and this free agent market is just about out of good starting pitchers.

ZiPS at least thinks that the Tigers likely got a “just right” deal, with the computer valuing Flaherty at two years, $32 million based on his projection, with his projected innings held down due to his injury history. I suspect the Tigers would be absolutely fine if Flaherty pitches to his 50th percentile projection, even if these numbers are less exciting than what he gave them in 2024. Detroit’s decision to trade Flaherty made sense in July because of where the club sat in the standings, but the Tigers sure felt his absence after they made their improbable push to the playoffs, when they desperately needed a guy to give them innings. Their postseason rotation consisted of Tarik Skubal and a bunch of relievers.

ZiPS currently projects the Tigers as the fourth-best team in the AL Central, around .500, but that’s close enough to be a threat to the top teams in the division. Signing a starter like Flaherty at this point in the offseason is a big get for Detroit, and it really shores up this rotation. Flaherty’s return gives the Tigers a solidly established five-man rotation of Skubal, Flaherty, Reese Olson, Alex Cobb, and Casey Mize. With Flaherty around, they won’t need to spend the spring figuring out whether they trust Keider Montero or Matt Manning to be their fifth starter, and they can comfortably give Jackson Jobe more than two starts at Triple-A before he either forces his way back onto the roster or is needed as an injury replacement.

Does the Flaherty’s signing dramatically change how the AL Central looks? Not really, but that’s hard to do at this point in the offseason. However, his addition addresses one of this team’s crucial needs heading into the regular season, and if the Tigers return to the postseason this year, they’ll have a deeper rotation that should give them a better chance to make it through.

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