Tigers should continue establishing Detroit-Houston pipeline with this free agent reliever

Since AJ Hinch became manager of the Tigers prior to the 2021 season, there have been constant discussions about players he coached during his years in Houston. Free agent discussions happened surrounding Marwin Gonzales, famously Carlos Correa, and a final massive push for Alex Bregman prior to 2025.

These were all considered because of just how important it is to Hinch to have an excellent clubhouse chemistry, but one former Astro and now free agent reliever, Bryan Abreu, feels like the perfect candidate to round out a progressing but still unsettled bullpen core.

Bryan Abreu, at a glance

Abreu played just one season under Hinch in 2019, but in that small sample he impressed, tossing 8 2/3 innings with 13 strikeouts while allowing just one run. When Hinch was let go due to the sign-stealing scandal, Abreu struggled with command issues in a small sample in 2020, but returned in 2021 in dominant fashion, and never looked back. Since the end of 2020, he had maintained at minimum nine Ks per nine innings, but typically strikes out closer to 12 in his prime years.

This fantastic strikeout stuff was representative of those dominant Astros bullpens during Hinch's time, and continued to be until the last two seasons, where Houston's pitching has stumbled. Abreu himself had a very tough first half of the season, especially with walking batters. Walks have always been part of Abreu's game, but 26 walks over 31 1/3 innings pitched was uncharacteristic even for him. Ultimately, it was just a terrible first 30 days of the season, with the vast majority of those walks and runs allowed occurring in March and April.

While the narrative had already begun that Abreu was taking a step back in terms of performance, and rumors about the Astros being willing to let him go in free agency became more prominent, his actual numbers improved pretty quickly from there.

In an identical sample size in May, he allowed just one run on four hits, but continued to struggle with walks. In June, a month where he struggled slightly, he found his command, walking just three over 8 2/3 innings, but it wasn't until July that he started to look like his old self again. By the end of the season, Abreu had an 3.73 ERA and 80 strikeouts over 66 1/3 innings.

His fit on the Tigers

A 3.73 ERA might not inspire confidence in the mind of a casual fan, especially since it came with a 1.356 WHIP. But in truth, with the Tigers having a 3.84 bullpen ERA in 2026, the focus shouldn't be merely on run prevention, it should be on situational leverage arm development, which was their greatest area of weaknesses this season. Abreu is one of the best strikeout relievers in the MLB today, which was an area the Tigers significantly lacked and takes a hit with the departure of their second-best strikeout arm, Kenley Jansen.

His whiff rate was one of the best marks in baseball, at 33.9%, while he posted a very high 29.9% strikeout rate across all batters, and a 78.4% zone contact rate overall. Interestingly, these were among his lower marks in recent years, as he has been known to produce 40+% whiff rates, and zone contact rates in the low 70s. His pull-air rate also suddenly jumped from comfortably in the teens to 24.6%, which can lead to major damage in a homer-friendly ballpark like Daikin Park.

But, his expected batting average overall was just .197, meaning that even with more hard hit balls than he'd usually surrender, and more pulled fly balls, he still experienced quite a bit of bad luck that a pitcher-friendly ballpark like Detroit could easily fix.

Overall, Abreu fits in perfectly with Detroit's bullpen plan next season. Combined with two solid strikeout options in Will Vest and Drew Sommers, and surrouned by soft contact specialists like Brant Hurter, Tyler Holton, and Jacob Waguespack, he would be a perfect arm for those situations late in games where AJ would try to push a reliever to throw an additional inning after they escaped a jam. He had 10 such appearances this year, with massive success. Signing Abreu this offseason would be a major indicator that the Tigers are still planning to compete next season.

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