{"id":343323,"date":"2025-12-13T21:09:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T21:09:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/343323\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T21:09:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T21:09:06","slug":"tigers-to-sign-kenley-jansen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/343323\/","title":{"rendered":"Tigers To Sign Kenley Jansen"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Tigers have agreed to a one-year contract with veteran closer Kenley Jansen<\/a>, ESPN\u2019s Jeff Passan<\/a> reports.\u00a0 The deal pays Jansen $11MM, as per USA Today\u2019s Bob Nightengale<\/a>, and The Athletic\u2019s Cody Stavenhagen adds<\/a> that the contract contains a club option on Jansen\u2019s services for the 2027 season.\u00a0 Earlier today, MassLive.com\u2019s Chris Cotillo<\/a> reported that the two sides were \u201cdeep in talks\u201d and heading towards the final stages of a deal.\u00a0 Jansen is represented by the Wasserman Agency.<\/p>\n

Will Vest<\/a> is coming off a strong season as Detroit\u2019s primary saves candidate, but Vest will now move back into a high-leverage setup role to accommodate one of baseball\u2019s most experienced closers.\u00a0 Jansen has 476 career saves, and is just three saves away from passing Lee Smith for third place on the all-time list.\u00a0 It certainly seems possible that Jansen can reach the 500-save plateau this season, though catching Trevor Hoffman<\/a> (601 saves) for the second-highest total in history doesn\u2019t seem possible unless Jansen reaches his goal<\/a> of pitching until at least through the 2029 season.<\/p>\n

For now, however, the 38-year-old Jansen has a one-year commitment from Detroit, with the 2027 option representing a possible continuation into the right-hander\u2019s age-39 campaign.\u00a0 The Tigers entered the offseason looking to reinforce their bullpen, and the team has signed Jansen and re-signed Kyle Finnegan<\/a> just within the last week.\u00a0 Jansen\u2019s deal probably takes the Tigers out of the running for another target in former Rays closer Pete Fairbanks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even after 16 Major League seasons, Jansen still has some gas in the tank, as evidenced by his 2.59 ERA over 59 innings with the Angels in 2025.\u00a0 However, his secondary metrics left something to be desired, as Jansen\u2019s 24.4% strikeout rate and 44.6% hard-hit ball rate were both easily the worst of his career.\u00a0 A .195 BABIP and 85.2% strand rate helped Jansen\u2019s bottom-line numbers remain in check, though his 3.94 SIERA was much higher than his actual ERA.<\/p>\n

Jansen did post better numbers as the 2025 season went on, and the Tigers themselves were responsible for a big chunk of the damage on the righty\u2019s ERA.\u00a0 (Of the 17 earned runs charged to Jansen in 2025, Detroit scored six of them in an ugly meltdown for Jansen back on May 2 in a 9-1 Tigers win over the Angels.)\u00a0 The stronger finish to the season provides some hope that Jansen can more fully get on track next year, and he might also be energized by again pitching for a contender after a year with the struggling Halos.<\/p>\n

For a team that has thrived on \u201cbullpen chaos\u201d over the last couple of seasons, the Tigers will now move in different direction by installing a true closer in place for the ninth inning.\u00a0 If Jansen can come close to his 2025 production, that\u2019s a nice plus for the team, as Vest move to a set-up role will strengthen things all the way down the depth chart.<\/p>\n

More bullpen moves may still be coming, as between Finnegan and Jansen\u2019s 2025 numbers,\u00a0the Tigers still haven\u2019t solved their primary goal of adding more punchout power to their bullpen.\u00a0 Detroit had the second-lowest bullpen strikeout rate (20.1%) of any team in baseball in 2025, ahead of only the lowly Rockies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Tigers have agreed to a one-year contract with veteran closer Kenley Jansen, ESPN\u2019s Jeff Passan reports.\u00a0 The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49,48,16153,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-343323","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-kenley-jansen","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343323","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=343323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}