{"id":262921,"date":"2025-11-05T08:24:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T08:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/262921\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T08:24:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T08:24:12","slug":"jack-flaherty-exercises-player-option","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/262921\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack Flaherty Exercises Player Option"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tigers right-hander Jack Flaherty<\/a> will not opt out of his contract, reports<\/a> ESPN\u2019s Jeff Passan. He\u2019ll exercise a $20MM player option and head back to Detroit for a third season. The Tigers formally announced the move just a minute or two after Passan\u2019s initial report.<\/p>\n

Flaherty, who turned 30 in October, had an uneven season, but it\u2019s still a mildly surprising decision to pick up the player option. It\u2019s unlikely he\u2019d have commanded a $20MM annual value on the open market, but a multi-year deal at a slightly lesser rate doesn\u2019t seem far-fetched. Middle-of-the-road starters like Luis Severino<\/a> ($67MM), Taijuan Walker<\/a> ($72MM), Jameson Taillon<\/a> ($68MM) and Eduardo Rodriguez<\/a> ($80MM) have all garnered notable three- or four-year contracts at this age or older.<\/p>\n

That said, had Flaherty turned the option down, this would\u2019ve been the third straight season in which he was a free agent. Perhaps there\u2019s an element of fatigue there, particularly given that he lingered in free agency until early February last time around. Turning down the player option would probably also have emboldened the Tigers to make a qualifying offer (only $2.025MM more than Flaherty\u2019s $20MM option). The prospect of another trip to the open market, this time with a QO hanging over him, may not have been especially appealing.<\/p>\n

Flaherty started 31 games and pitched 161 innings for manager A.J. Hinch in 2025. He was tagged for a pedestrian 4.64 ERA, though there are plenty of encouraging rate stats that suggest he\u2019s in line for better results moving forward. The right-hander struck out a well above-average 27.6% of his opponents, was slightly better than league-average in terms of swinging-strike rate (11.3%), and sat barely north of average in walk rate (8.7%).<\/p>\n

Flaherty\u2019s 92.9 mph average fastball was roughly in line with the prior season\u2019s 93.2 mph mark. He was plagued by a slightly elevated average on balls in play and a lower-than-usual strand rate; metrics like FIP (3.85) and SIERA (3.67) felt that Flaherty was far better than his more rudimentary earned run average would suggest. The 18.9-point differential between his strikeout and walk percentages ranked 16th among the 53 MLB pitchers who tossed at least 160 innings, sandwiching him right between Freddy Peralta<\/a> and Kevin Gausman<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The return of Flaherty provides some additional stability in Detroit\u2019s rotation. Tarik Skubal will of course lead the staff again, taking aim at what would be a third consecutive Cy Young win (as he\u2019s all but certain to win his second straight award in a couple weeks). He and Flaherty will be joined by Casey Mize and Reese Olson, health permitting, but the final spot is more up in the air. Rookie Troy Melton looked sharp down the stretch but hasn\u2019t pitched a full season in the majors yet. Top prospect Jackson Jobe will miss most of next year after undergoing Tommy John surgery in mid-June. Keider Montero, Sawyer Gipson-Long and Ty Madden join Melton as an option for that last spot, but no one in that group brings much certainty to the table.<\/p>\n

If the Tigers were hoping to see Flaherty decline and sign elsewhere, thus sparing $20MM from the books and allowing them to pursue a bigger fish in free agency, they still ought to be able to line up on a trade. Flaherty\u2019s $20MM might feel a bit steep, but the going rate for innings continues to escalate. The Tigers themselves gave Alex Cobb $15MM last winter after a season in which he made just three starts with Cleveland. Aging veterans Charlie Morton ($15MM), Justin Verlander ($15MM) and Max Scherzer ($15.5MM) were all paid similarly \u2014 Verlander coming off a 5.48 ERA in 90 1\/3 innings as he headed into his age-42 season.<\/p>\n

Flaherty\u2019s $20MM salary isn\u2019t a raucous bargain but also isn\u2019t out of line with modern-day contractual norms \u2014 particularly if one believes his true talent level lay closer to his fielding-independent metrics than his earned run average. Even with Flaherty now under contract, the Tigers\u2019 projected payroll, per RosterResource<\/a>, sits around $121.5MM. That doesn\u2019t account for potential non-tenders or trades from a huge class of 14 arbitration-eligible players. Detroit has previously pushed payroll up to the $200MM range, albeit under the watch of now-late owner Mike Ilitch. The Tigers\u2019 top Opening Day mark under his son, Chris Ilitch, has been last year\u2019s $145MM number, though deadline acquisitions pushed the end-of-year figure up into the $155-160MM range.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tigers right-hander Jack Flaherty will not opt out of his contract, reports ESPN\u2019s Jeff Passan. He\u2019ll exercise a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49,48,14559,82],"class_list":["post-262921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-jack-flaherty","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}