The Tigers Are Pagán the Future of Their Bullpen on This Offseason’s First Free Agent Signing

Katie Stratman-Imagn Images In the days before the 2021-22 lockout, there was an unprecedented leaguewide free agent spending bacchanal that set high expectations for this November. On Tuesday night, the Detroit Tigers showed up to the party and picked the first canapé off the tray, signing reliever Emilio Pagán to a one-year, $11 million contract. Pagán is the first of our top 50 free agents to come off the board, and we’re starting from the bottom of the list: Ben Clemens had him ranked right at no. 50 and predicted a two-year, $16 million contract for the 35-year-old from South Carolina. Our crowdsourced predictions were the same, to within half a million dollars. That ranking pretty accurately reflected Pagán’s status as a trustworthy but non-elite reliever. In three years with the Reds, Pagán made 153 appearances and posted a 3.44 ERA with commensurate peripherals. He struck out 28.2% of his opponents while walking just 7.3%, and after taking over the closer’s role in 2025, converted 57 of 66 save chances over two seasons. Even last year’s numbers don’t tell the whole story. In the first week of May, Pagán went down for about two months with a hamstring strain; he’d gotten off to an awful start, blowing a save in his first appearance of the season, and allowing multiple runs in three of his last 14 outings before he hit the IL with a 6.43 ERA and a 5.81 FIP. But from his return on July 1 to the end of the season, Pagán was one of the best relievers in baseball, with a 1.88 ERA and 34 strikeouts in 28 2/3 innings over his final 30 appearances of 2026. In those games, he converted all 19 of his save opportunities as the Reds went 27-3 when he pitched. Pagán’s career-long weak point has been his proclivity for allowing home runs — an attribute that’s occasionally been exploited for jokes at his expense, even in these pages — but from July 1 on, he allowed only five runs from four homers, and only one run by any other means. That’s the story of Pagán in Cincinnati, in brief. Placing a fly ball pitcher in a home run park did indeed lead to a lot of home runs. In the past three seasons, 70 pitchers have thrown at least 80 relief innings and converted at least 10 saves; of those, Pagán had the sixth-highest HR/9 (1.39). Everyone ahead of him on that list either pitched at altitude or had a career-imperiling meltdown. Even so, Pagán was a pretty good high-leverage reliever overall. No one would confuse him for Mason Miller, but he consistently runs strikeout rates in the high 20s, gets a ton of popups, and doesn’t give out many cheapies in the form of walks or seeing-eye grounders. All told, it’s hard to view his tenure with the Reds as anything but a success. Pagán had bounced around a bit after his breakout 2019 season with the Rays, but he settled into a comfortable position at the back end of Cincinnati’s bullpen; after his initial two-year contract ran out at the end of 2025, he and the Reds re-upped for a third, with a $10 million player option for 2027. For the Reds, who hand out paychecks like a Dickensian villain, that’s a substantial financial commitment; Pagán was one of just four players to earn an eight-figure paycheck from the Castellinis last season. It seems like they had a good thing going. Perhaps, based on his white-hot second half, Pagán thought he could get a bigger deal. But less than two weeks after declining his option, he decided to become the first significant free agent off the board, and for the same term and only $1 million more than what he left on the table. Maybe it was just time to shake things up. We all knew people in our 20s who dated for three years, only to realize that while they liked their partner, they didn’t necessarily want to spend their rest of their lives together. Sometimes a relationship just runs its course, and you shake hands and part ways. So what is Pagán’s relationship with the Tigers going to look like? Well, he’s a known quantity. In an era where velocity is cheap, Pagán doesn’t throw hard, especially not for a right-handed one-inning reliever. But he gets tons of rise on his four-seamer, and throws both a cutter and splitter with lots of sink along a similar vertical plane. When that works, he gets whiffs and popups; when it doesn’t, he’ll give up the occasional homer. Over the past three seasons, 359 relievers have faced at least 250 batters. Of those, Pagán has the 43rd-lowest xBA, at .204, but the 198th-best xSLG, at .385. It’s hard not to think about Pagán’s change of scenery in terms of his new home ballpark; no doubt, there are some of you who are pounding the table in disbelief that I haven’t mentioned that the Comerica Park outfield is bigger than some European principalities. In practice, that might matter less than you’d think. Over the past three seasons, Baseball Savant has Great American Ball Park as the 12th-most hitter-friendly stadium in the big leagues, with Comerica just two places behind. If you isolate the park factor to home runs alone, Great American Ball Park is fourth, Comerica 14th. Pagán gave up 23 home runs over the past three seasons; Baseball Savant says he’d have given up 27 if he’d played all his games at Great American, compared to 21 if he’d played all of them at Comerica. Consider also that the Reds and Tigers were just two runs apart in team outfield defense last year, according to FRV. It’s not like he’s moving from the Baker Bowl to Candlestick Park. That’s fine, from Detroit’s perspective. Pagán might be a homer-prone 35-year-old, but as such pitchers go, he’s about as low-maintenance as an old Honda motorcycle. He had two two-month IL stints with the Reds, one for a lat strain in 2024, the other the aforementioned hamstring injury, but he’s got almost no history of arm issues. There are a couple brief IL stints on his chart for muscle tightness or inflammation, but nothing in his shoulder or elbow. Pagán’s fastball velocity is holding into his late 30s, and he continues to miss bats, throw strikes, and induce weak contact. He’s not automatic in high leverage, but he turns in many more routine 1-2-3 innings than white-knuckle adventures. And God knows the Tigers need that. Detroit’s Bullpen Performance Since 2024 Year ERA Rank WAR Rank K-BB% Rank WPA Rank High-Lev. ERA Rank 2024 3.55 4th 4.4 10th 14.5% 17th 4.76 9th 5.70 9th 2025 4.05 17th 1.7 24th 11.3% 27th 4.51 12th 4.53 4th 2026 3.84 12th 2.1 21st 12.6% 18th -3.83 26th 9.21 30th Even when they were making the playoffs, the Tigers made hard work of the stretch run. Last year, they would’ve been miles from contention if they’d played in a real division, rather than the AL Central. A big reason for that was some absolutely brutal high-leverage relief work. Last offseason, Detroit rolled the dice on another veteran free agent, Kenley Jansen, who posted OK overall numbers but finished the season with a WPA of -1.42, six blown saves in 28 chances, and eight meltdowns (outings with a WPA of -0.06 or worse). Kyle Finnegan, acquired from the Nationals ahead of the 2025 trade deadline, posted a 5.42 FIP, a 5.75 xERA, and -0.8 WAR in 63 appearances in 2026. Finnegan’s K-BB rate of 4.8% was 146th out of 147 qualified relievers. Realistically, the Tigers need to add eight to 10 wins to their 2026 total if they want to think about making the playoffs in 2027. That might not be as hard as you’d think; their Pythagorean record in 2026 was actually 89-73. (Hey, does anyone know if having a crappy bullpen causes teams to underperform their Pythagorean record?) Pagán isn’t going to fix that by himself. But he’s going to turn a couple of those annoying late-game meltdowns into boring, routine wins. If that’s part of a broader bullpen improvement project — maybe one more external high-octane relief arm, plus bouncebacks from Finnegan and Will Vest — it’ll do the Tigers a world of good.