Orlando, Fla. – The Tigers are running it back with leverage reliever Kyle Finnegan.
Late Tuesday night, he and the club reached an agreement on a two-year deal worth $19 million, sources confirmed to The Detroit News.
Finnegan, 34, came to the Tigers at the trade deadline last season and provided a productive late-inning complement to Will Vest. He posted three wins and four saves in 18 regular-season innings with a 0.722 WHIP.
The reunion was hardly a surprise.
“I loved every second of my time here,” Finnegan said after the Tigers’ season ended in a 15-inning loss in Seattle in Game 5 of the ALDS. “Hopefully, the feeling is mutual. I’ll head into free agency and see what that has in store for me, but I can’t say enough good things about the Tigers.”
During the General Manager’s meetings in Las Vegas last month, Tigers’ GM Jeff Greenberg echoed that sentiment.
“We loved having Kyle,” he told reporters covering the event. “He deserves all of the credit in the world for being as open-minded as he was to making those adjustments and embracing the roles that we put him in and his impact in the clubhouse.
“For all of those reasons, we have interest in bringing him back.”
The Tigers encouraged him to lean less on his high-octane fastball and harder on his splitter. The results were impactful. He had a 4.37 ERA and 19.6% strikeout rate with the Nationals. In the shorter sample with the Tigers, his ERA was 1.50 and his strikeout rate rose to 34.8%.
The swing-and-miss rate on his splitter in the months of August and September was over 50%.
The signing of Finnegan is expected to be the first of several bullpen moves the Tigers make this offseason.
“We would like to add to our pen,” Greenberg said Tuesday at the Winter Meetings. “And there are a lot of ways to approach that. It’s more about finding the right fit based on the performance and the attributes we’re looking for.
“Obviously we’d like to add more swing and miss but that can come in a variety of shapes and forms. And that can come through free agency, trades, the waiver wire or minor league free agents.”
As it stands, Finnegan, Vest and Tyler Holton are the only relievers coming to camp relatively assured of a spot in the bullpen. Brenan Hanifee and Brant Hurter will be competing to retain their roles, as will Beau Brieske, who is coming off an injury-plagued season.
Chris.McCosky@detroitnews.com
@cmccosky
