The Tigers’ bullpen revamp for 2026 now includes an unusual feature for the A.J. Hinch era: A veteran closer. Detroit on Wednesday announced it had agreed on a one-year, $9 million contract with four-time All-Star and 16-year veteran Kenley Jansen.
The deal also includes club option for 2027 worth $12 million against a $2 million buyout.
The 38-year-old Jansen leads all active Major Leaguers with 476 saves, just two shy of Lee Smith for third on MLB’s all-time leaderboard. Jansen has recorded at least 25 saves in 13 consecutive non-shortened seasons, excluding the pandemic-truncated 2020 campaign.
“He’s one of the best to ever do it,” Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris said, “and I’ve admired him from afar and up close in the NL West for a few years. He brings experience. He brings a ton of success in the highest leverage moments of games in the regular season and the postseason.”
Jansen recorded 29 saves this past season in a career resurgence for the Angels. His 24.4 percent strikeout rate was the lowest of his career, but his 0.95 WHIP was his best since 2017, when he shared the National League lead with 41 saves and placed fifth in NL Cy Young voting.
Jansen has always leaned on his cutter, which was one of the nastiest pitches in the game in his prime. But it was a more effective pitch this past season, allowing a mere .164 batting average and .238 wOBA despite an average exit velocity of 90.9 miles per hour and a career-low whiff rate of 25.2 percent, according to Baseball Savant.
The Tigers saw Jansen at his low point during the season, handing him six of his 18 runs allowed for the season in one tumultuous ninth inning at Angel Stadium on May 2. Riley Greene and Colt Keith opened the inning with back-to-back home runs to put Detroit in front before Jace Jung singled and scored on a Javier Báez homer. Greene homered again later in the inning off Jake Eder to finish Jansen’s line.
Jansen bounced back the next day and retired both Greene and Keith with a three-run lead to record the save. He posted a 1.97 ERA, 3.27 FIP and .148 batting average the rest of the way. From June 24 until the end of the season, he posted a 1.11 ERA, 0.65 WHIP and .366 OPS allowed.
“When you drill down to his performance, I think we noticed a couple of things,” Harris said. “One, he missed a lot of bats in the zone, which is still a skill that he has, just because it's a unique shape in his cutter. He makes hitters uncomfortable, and he pounds the zone with it. The other thing that we noticed with him is he got off to a little bit of a slower start by his standards early in the year, but his velo on the cutter started to tick up a little bit and since that point, he was just truly dominant down the stretch.
“Those are the types of things that we think he can still do, and those are the types of things that we need to add to the back end of our pen. So for those reasons and many others, we really found him appealing.”
Jansen’s fifth MLB team is one that has functioned well without an established closer under Hinch, who has prioritized using his best relievers in the biggest situations against the toughest part of a lineup regardless of inning. Will Vest led the team with 23 saves, but five other pitchers recorded a save, including nine from Tommy Kahnle in what amounted to an early-season timeshare. Four more saves came from Trade Deadline acquisition Kyle Finnegan in his first few weeks as a Tiger, before the former Nationals closer settled into a more situational role leading up to the ninth inning.
The Tigers reached an agreement to bring back Finnegan earlier this week. By adding Jansen, Detroit sets up a potentially modified bullpen where it can continue to mix and match situationally leading up to the ninth inning and then hand it off to Jansen, who will be by far the most veteran closer Hinch has managed.
That does not necessarily mean Jansen will be named the closer.
“I think when you look at our pen, we will have multiple options for the biggest spots in the game,” Harris said. “Will we label Kenley the closer? I don’t know. That’s going to be for A.J. to figure out. Just going to try to give him as many options as possible and trust him to sort through it all in Spring Training.
“The one thing I can share is that before we signed Kenley, we connected him with A.J. so that they could have a conversation. From that conversation, we learned Kenley’s all about winning. He’s willing to pitch in any spot. He just wants to be in a winning environment. And he was really attracted to Detroit as a destination, which is a huge step forward for this organization to be able to court a future Hall of Famer like Kenley because he wants to come here and win.”
The Tigers have turned to veteran closers in previous windows of contention with mixed results. Former Tigers All-Star closer Todd Jones returned to Detroit in 2006 and posted 93 saves over his final three MLB seasons, pushing him past the 300-save mark and earning him the franchise record. Jose Valverde saved 119 games over four years in Detroit, including a single-season team record of 49 in 2011. Joe Nathan had mixed success over one-plus seasons in Detroit, saving 35 games in 2014 but with a 4.81 ERA. Francisco Rodríguez racked up 44 saves in 2016 before the Tigers released him midway through the 2017 season.