Scott Harris gives Tigers fans even more of a reason to love Kenley Jansen signing

There's no question that the addition of Kenley Jansen made the Detroit Tigers' bullpen better. The question actually is, by how much? If this were seven or eight years ago, fans would be feeling as if they had just signed Edwin Diaz, but Jansen is a long way removed from his heyday.

Though he's spent the last several years bouncing around the league, Jansen has still been an acceptable ninth-inning option. Even at that stature, the Tigers got him for a steal, paying him just $9 million for 2026 and holding a $12 million club option with a $2 million buyout for 2027.

But to hear Scott Harris tell it, the Tigers might as well have gotten an elite closer a la Diaz or Robert Suarez, and the numbers show that he's not exactly wrong.

Scott Harris's comments about Kenley Jansen should only fire up Tigers fans even more

Harris spoke about the intangibles that Jansen brings, coming in with a wealth of experience and a stellar track record in high-leverage situations, especially on the biggest stages. That veteran presence and leadership have value to a club as young as Detroit. While the hitters skew younger than the pitchers, both can benefit from that sage wisdom, and everyone can feel at ease knowing there's a battle-tested warrior with a track record of excellence waiting in the wings to close out wins with the game on the line.

Jansen hit 450 career saves last season, and now sitting at 476, the MLB active saves leader should hit 500 in 2026, barring a catastrophe. That means, along the way, he'll pass Lee Smith for third all-time and he'll also become just the third player ever to eclipse the 500 saves plateau.

But it was when Harris got down to talking about Jansen's performance that things got really interesting.

"When you drill down to his performance last year, we noticed a couple of things. 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, which 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 velocity on the cutter started to tick up a little bit on June 24, and since that point, he was just truly dominant down the stretch. I think he had a 1 ERA and absolutely dominated the strikezone," Harris said.

Jansen began 2025 with eight perfect innings in the season's first month. However, in May, he faltered to the tune of a 9.64 ERA. That would be Jansen's only hiccup of the year. From June 1 onward, he threw 41 2/3 innings and logged a 1.51 ERA. In that time, hitters managed just a .127 batting average against.

Those are some vintage Jansen numbers, and if he can repeat that in 2026, Detroit will have gotten perhaps the best of the bunch when it comes to the free-agent closers.