4 difficult roster decisions the Detroit Tigers must address ASAP

Bringing in bullpen arms would be a nice touch for the Detroit Tigers

The Detroit bullpen is bad, full stop. Jason Foley has been awesome in 2023 and the Tigers are very fortunate that he is under team control for the foreseeable future. However, the rest of the bullpen consists of a few okay arms in Will Vest, Alex Lange, and Jose Cisnero and then a bunch of guys that provide little to no value after that.

The nice thing about bullpen arms is that they are typically relatively inexpensive both in free agency and at the deadline outside of the absolute top names. If the Tigers decide to keep themselves competitive in 2023, there are a ton of rental relievers with a ton of value like Keynan Middleton, Amir Garrett, and Brad Hand make sense as options as guys that shouldn't clean out the farm system to acquire.

Now if the Tigers decide to be active sellers at the trade deadline, they could and should still be active in the bullpen market, but instead shift their focus to guys with team control so that the Tigers can set themselves up well for the future. Scott Barlow from the Royals, Kendall Graveman from the White Sox, and Justin Lawrence from the Rockies are all reasonable targets if they go that route.

If at all possible, the Detroit Tigers need to shed Javier Baez's contract

This is a dream scenario and frankly, it is very unlikely to happen. The six year, $140 million deal Baez signed was very questionable when it started and has aged like milk ever since to the point where it is one of the worst contracts in all of baseball. Given the fact that Baez is slashing .227/.263/.329 and is on track for the worst offensive season of his career doesn't instill the most confidence that another team is going to be excited to bring him in.

In an ideal world, Baez hits well in July and Detroit finds a team that is willing to take on some of his contract while also maybe getting a couple decent prospects back. However, even that is going to be a tough sell as would a deal where the Tigers basically sell one of their better prospects to another team by getting them to also take on a chunk of Baez's deal.

Whatever ends up happening, getting out from under Baez's deal need to be a focus as it is currently an anchor on Detroit's payroll and is going to be for a long time otherwise.

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