{"id":361158,"date":"2025-12-21T03:56:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T03:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/361158\/"},"modified":"2025-12-21T03:56:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T03:56:10","slug":"tigers-designate-justyn-henry-malloy-for-assignment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/361158\/","title":{"rendered":"Tigers Designate Justyn-Henry Malloy For Assignment"},"content":{"rendered":"

To clear a 40-man roster spot for<\/a> reliever Kyle Finnegan<\/a>, the Tigers have designated outfielder Justyn-Henry Malloy<\/a> for assignment. It\u2019s the first DFA in Malloy\u2019s young career. He appeared in 52 games with Detroit last season.<\/p>\n

Detroit acquired Malloy and lefty Jake Higginbotham<\/a> from Atlanta in a December 2022 trade that sent right-hander Joe Jimenez<\/a> to the Braves. Jimenez has dealt with injury issues, but has provided strong work in the Atlanta bullpen when healthy. The Tigers haven\u2019t had much to show for their end of the deal. Malloy has hit .209 across 357 plate appearances in his two big-league stints with the club. He\u2019s struck out at a massive 32.8% rate at the MLB level. Higginbotham spent two seasons in Detroit\u2019s minor league system, topping out at Triple-A (one game). He signed with San Diego as a minor league free agent last offseason.<\/p>\n

The Braves took Malloy in the sixth round of the 2021 draft. He zoomed through the system, reaching Triple-A in 2022. Malloy compiled a sterling 144 wRC+ across three levels that season. MLB.com<\/a> ranked him seventh among Detroit\u2019s prospects in 2023. He slugged 23 home runs at Triple-A in his first season in the organization. Malloy continued to do damage with Toledo in 2024, though his strikeout rate ticked up to 28%. He earned a promotion in June and spent the majority of the remainder of the season with the Tigers. Malloy showed some power with eight home runs, but he struck out at a massive 37% clip.<\/p>\n

Malloy has a good sense of the strike zone, as evidenced by a career 12% walk rate and a sub-20% chase rate. It\u2019s making contact when he does choose to swing that\u2019s been the problem. Malloy had a hefty 36.6% whiff rate in 2024. He improved that number to 29.1% this past season, though that mark was still well below average. Malloy trimmed his strikeout rate to a reasonable 25.2% in 2025. Unfortunately, his batted ball metrics fell off. Malloy posted a decent 37.8% hard-hit rate in his debut year, but it tumbled to 31.1% this season. After recording a double-digit barrel rate in 2024, that mark plummeted to 4.1% this year.<\/p>\n

Most of Malloy\u2019s at-bats came as a DH or pinch-hitter in 2025. He\u2019s totaled -4 Outs Above Average in his career. Malloy came up as a third baseman, but he\u2019s only played the outfield since joining the Detroit organization. He was a bat-first prospect, and he\u2019s trending toward a DH-only future.<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of Junfu Han, Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To clear a 40-man roster spot for reliever Kyle Finnegan, the Tigers have designated outfielder Justyn-Henry Malloy for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[178190,363,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-361158","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-justyn-henry-malloy","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}