The most overpaid and underpaid players on Tigers' 2025 roster

While the Miguel Cabrera contract felt like a good idea at the time, it wound up being a significant problem for the Tigers in Cabrera's final years. It wasn't helped by the fact that the team was bad on the field, but it was a major weight lifted when Cabrera retired.

Now that the team is getting back into form, President Scott Harris can't afford to have a similar scenario play out with yet another crippling deal.

It's obvious to anyone who has watched the Tigers play over the last few years, but shortstop Javier Baez is just about cooked. He was dreadful in 2024, hitting a paltry .184/.221/.294 in 80 games. No amount of defense can cover up that lack of production at the plate. The worst part of it is that Baez won't reach free agency until after the 2027 season, so the Tigers are stuck paying his contract unless they can somehow find a way to trade him.

On a list of overpaid Tigers, Baez is at the top. He's arguably one of the most overpaid guys in the entire sport, as he's set to receive $73 million over the next three years. To this point, he hasn't done much to block the guys behind him, but coming off the team's first playoff appearance in a decade and with an intriguing prospect in Hao-Yu Lee nearly ready for major league at-bats, the Tigers will have to get Baez out of the way.

These are the most overpaid and underpaid players on the Tigers roster in 2025

But Baez isn't the only overpaid player on the Tigers roster heading into 2025. While he put up some of his best innings in Detroit last year, Jack Flaherty just hasn't been a reliable guy throughout the course of his career. The four preceding years were not great, as Flaherty struggled to a 4.42 ERA in just 299 innings. You have to go back to 2019 to find the last vestiges of an effective starter.

It's not clear whether Flaherty can repeat his successful first half 2024 performance in 2025, but the Tigers are paying him $25 million for the privilege to find out. Thankfully for Detroit, Flaherty's deal will likely be for just one year. It does have a player option for 2026, but at just $10 million things would have to go drastically bad for him to opt in.

The encouraging thing is that Flaherty's strikeout rate jumped back up in 2024. If he can keep missing bats, the contract might wind up a win for the Tigers. But with so many other strong options on the free agent market this winter, it's hard to look at the Flaherty deal and wish that Harris hadn't taken a different approach to solving the rotation.

Thankfully, the Tigers are also getting a ton of production from a number of underpaid players. It's not great news for those guys, of course. But having a few contributors on team-friendly salaries opens up the opportunity for Harris and the Tigers to make external additions, and hopefully they'll push this team back into the postseason in 2025.

The most obvious name here is ace Tarik Skubal, who'll be paid a pittance in 2025. He's due to receive just $10.1 million this year, a brutally low number coming off an AL Cy Young award winnings year. Skubal was dominant in 2024, pitching to a 2.39 ERA with a 2.49 FIP in 192 innings. 2023 was a partial year for Skubal, but over the past two seasons, his ERA is a stunning 2.51 and he's run a 31% strikeout rate during that stretch.

Skubal won't be underpaid for long. He's arbitration eligible again in 2026, but he'll be a free agent after that. Assuming he stays healthy, the young lefty is going to get a massive deal somewhere. Hopefully the Tigers can find a way to keep him around.

In addition to Skubal, the Tigers are also underpaying star center fielder Riley Greene. The 24-year-old had his first true breakout in 2024, hitting .262/.348/.479 with 24 homers and strong plate discipline, earning 4.0 fWAR. Greene is under team control this year, meaning he'll make just $800K.

One of the most valuable assets a team can have is a player like Greene, providing substantial on-field performance, while getting paid pennies on the dollar. Greene will be due for a significant raise in his first year of arbitration in 2026, but that doesn't matter much to this year's squad. The Tigers need to take advantage of these next couple years, where guys like Greene, Skubal, Colt Keith, and an emerging Jackson Jobe are all contributing without being paid what they're worth.