For most teams, going to arbitration with an important young player is usually a negative outcome. Players want to be paid and feel wanted, especially when they’re younger, and teams want that, too, as long as it stays within the restrictions of their payroll budget.
The Los Angeles Angels take a different approach to this, however. They fight their cases down to the last nickel, and that’s turning out to be the case with Angels pitcher Reid Detmers. The money difference is small; Detmers filed for $2.925 million while the Angels filed at $2.625 million, according to Nick San Miguel of Halo Hangout.
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But there are two sides to the story, so we’ll tell both with this one, just to be fair. Detmers did have an excellent year in 2025, but he was also shut down due to elbow and forearm issues in September.
He’s also trying to make a transition that will increase his innings workload significantly. Detmers threw just under 65 innings last year with an ERA of 3.96, and he had 80 strikeouts while walking just 25.
But Detmers is joining the rotation, which makes his health issue in September a potentially big deal. The reliever has tried to make the transition to the rotation back in 2024, and his 6.70 ERA in 17 starts earned him a trip back to the minors, according to San Miguel.
The Angels have a lot of question marks associated with their pitching this year, and Detmers is one of the biggest X factors. If he can’t throw at least 100 innings as a starter, that will add even more chaos to a disorganized situation. The Angels already have plenty of injured pitchers, and right now they have no real idea who they’ll be able to throw into the mix.
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This shouldn’t play a role in the arbitration process, though. It should be simple—either the medicals are good enough for Detmers to make this kind of move, or they’re not. If they’re not, he should stay a reliever at least temporarily, especially since the value of a strong bullpen seems to be increasingly constantly in today’s game.
Hopefully this situation will be resolved smoothly, but that’s not the Angels way, either. The painstaking process of resolving the contract of Anthony Rendon was amble evidence of that, and so was the Tyler Skaggs civil suit trial. All of those nickels are important to owner Arte Moreno, who continues to clutch and grab for every one of them.