By
Anthony Franco | November 15, 2021 at 8:01am CDT
8:01 am: The deal also contains a no-trade clause, reports Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free Press (
Twitter links). Petzold adds that the contract contains $3MM in possible incentives.
7:52 am: It’s a $77MM guarantee, according to Heyman, who
adds that Rodríguez will have the option to opt out after 2023. The deal also contains additional incentives.
7:48 am: The contract also contains at least one opt-out clause, reports Joel Sherman of the New York Post (
Twitter link). Jeff Passan of ESPN
reports the deal’s total guarantee landing between $77MM and $80MM.
7:47 am: Rodríguez and the Tigers are in agreement on a five-year deal, reports Jon Heyman of the MLB Network (
on Twitter).
7:35 am: The Tigers are nearing agreement on a multi-year contract with free agent left-hander
Eduardo Rodríguez, reports Cody Stavenhagen of the Athletic (
Twitter link). Should a deal come together, it’d mark the most significant move of the first few weeks of the offseason. Rodríguez, who recently rejected a qualifying offer from the Red Sox, ranked
fourteenth on MLBTR’s Top 50 free agents, with a contract guarantee projected at $70MM over five years.
Rodríguez was seemingly in strong demand, with the Blue Jays, Angels and incumbent Red Sox among the other clubs known to have interest in his services. (Boston presented him with a multi-year offer in addition to the one-year qualifying offer). It seems Detroit will wind up topping the bidding, in the process installing a mid-rotation arm to its fairly young starting staff. That was known to be a priority for the Tigers’ front office, with general manager Al Avila frankly telling reporters
after the season that adding an established starter “
would be a necessity” for the club.
Detroit has also been tied to right-handers
Jon Gray and
Anthony DeSclafani, but it seems Rodríguez will be the Tigers’ big rotation add of the offseason. He’ll serve as the veteran anchor in a starting group that also includes young, highly-touted arms like
Casey Mize,
Tarik Skubal and
Matt Manning. With
Spencer Turnbull expected to miss most or all of 2022 after undergoing a July Tommy John surgery and
Matthew Boyd looking likely to be non-tendered after undergoing a flexor procedure, it’s possible Detroit looks to add additional rotation depth later in the offseason. It’s unlikely any subsequent will be as impactful or costly as Rodríguez, whose reported contract terms are quite strong.
Not only does Rodríguez top MLBTR’s projected guarantee by $7MM, he picks up the freedom to re-test the market two years from now. The southpaw won’t turn 29 years old until April 2022, meaning he’ll only be entering his age-31 campaign over 2023-24 offseason. If he pitches well over the next couple seasons, it’s easy to envision Rodríguez opting out and hitting free agency in search of another long-term deal during a winter without any sort of uncertainty about the collective bargaining agreement. Yet the contract’s five-year guarantee also gives him solid stability to guard against injuries or underperformance that could crop up over the next two years.
That Rodríguez generated such strong interest and landing this kind of commitment from the Tigers serves as the latest reminder of teams’ changing methods of player evaluation. On the surface, Rodríguez wouldn’t appear to be coming off a particularly impressive season. He racked up 157 2/3 innings over 32 appearances (31 starts), but he did so with a career-worst 4.74 ERA. Not long ago, a five-year guarantee for a pitcher coming off a platform season in which his ERA was pushing 5.00 would’ve been inconceivable.
Teams are going far beyond ERA to evaluate pitchers in 2021, though, and Rodríguez’s underlying numbers were very strong. He struck out 27.4% of opponents this past season, a mark that’s nearly five percentage points above the league average for starters. Rodríguez’s 11.7% swinging strike rate is also a bit north of the 10.9% league mark, his fourth consecutive season generating whiffs at greater than an 11% clip when healthy.
More to come.
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