News Tigers Team Notes

Giants Sign Jason Foley

2:28pm: Justice delos Santos of the San Jose Mercury News reports that the Giants are expecting Foley to be ready to go sometime midseason. It doesn’t sound like he’ll be an option for Opening Day.

2:12pm: The Giants announced Tuesday that they’ve signed right-handed reliever Jason Foley to a one-year, major league contract. The Wasserman client missed most of the 2025 season due to shoulder surgery and was non-tendered by the Tigers last month. ESPN’s Jesse Rogers reports that Foley is guaranteed $2MM on the deal. The Giants haven’t announced a corresponding 40-man move but will need to do so soon, as they were already at capacity prior to signing Foley.

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From 2021-24, Foley was a frequently used high-leverage arm with the Tigers, even climbing to the team’s closer rank in 2024, when he paced Detroit with 28 saves. He’s pitched 199 2/3 innings in the majors and sports a 3.16 earned run average. Foley’s career 18.1% strikeout rate is well below average, but he sports a strong 6.2% walk rate and a huge 54.1% ground-ball rate in his career, which should mesh well with the left-side infield tandem of Matt Chapman and Willy Adames.

Prior to his injury, Foley sat just under 97 mph with a power sinker that he threw at a near-62% clip. The 6’4″ righty complemented his two-seamer with a slider sitting 87.5 mph and a seldom-used changeup that sat 91.1 mph. Foley was surprisingly optioned to Triple-A Toledo following a relatively shaky spring training performance. He pitched well with the Tigers’ Toledo affiliate (6 2/3 shutout innings) but showed diminished velocity (95.3 mph average sinker) before hitting the minor league injured list.

About six weeks after that injury, the Tigers called Foley up to the MLB roster and placed him on the major league 60-day IL. That granted him major league service for the remainder of the season, but Foley spent enough time in Triple-A and on the minor league injured list that he didn’t accrue a full year of service in 2025. After entering the season with 3.033 years of service, he finished it out at 3.150. As such, he’ll be controllable via arbitration for two seasons beyond the 2026 campaign.

With Foley seemingly still on the mend, this is more of a long-term play than an immediate jolt to a Giants bullpen that’s in clear need of arms. San Francisco traded Camilo Doval and Tyler Rogers prior to July’s trade deadline and lost breakout right-hander Randy Rodriguez to Tommy John surgery in late September. Ryan Walker, Erik Miller, Jose Butto and JT Brubaker are the only current members of the bullpen who were both healthy in 2025 and have even one year of major league service time. (San Francisco also signed lefty Sam Hentges in free agency earlier this winter, but as with Foley, he missed 2025 due to shoulder surgery.)
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Source: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2025/12/giants-sign-jason-foley.html
 
MLBTR Podcast: The Mets Sign Jorge Polanco, And The Braves, Blue Jays And Royals Make Moves

The latest episode of the MLB Trade Rumors Podcast is now live on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts! Make sure you subscribe as well! You can also use the player at this link to listen, if you don’t use Spotify or Apple for podcasts.

This week, host Darragh McDonald is joined by Steve Adams of MLB Trade Rumors to discuss…


Check out our past episodes!

  • Winter Meetings Recap – listen here
  • An Agent’s Perspective with B.B. Abbott – Also, Cease, Williams, Helsley, And Gray – listen here
  • Some “Classic Baseball Trades,” Nimmo For Semien, And Ward For Rodriguez – listen here

The podcast intro and outro song “So Long” is provided courtesy of the band Showoff. Check out their Facebook page here!

Photo courtesy of Nick Turchiaro, Imagn Images
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Source: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2025...e-braves-blue-jays-and-royals-make-moves.html
 
Tigers Sign Four Pitchers To Minor League Deals

December 19th: Guenther will make $787K if he cracks the roster, per Petzold.

December 18th: The Tigers have made a handful of depth additions in the past few days. Relievers Jack Little and Sean Guenther return on minor league contracts after being non-tendered, according to the MLB.com transaction tracker. They’re adding left-hander Enmanuel De Jesus on a minor league deal that’d pay him at a $1.3MM rate if he makes the big league roster, reports Evan Petzold of The Detroit Free-Press. Righty reliever Cole Waites will also be in camp as a non-roster invitee after signing a minor league deal last week, as first reported by Ari Alexander of 7 News Boston.

Guenther is the only of the four pitchers who has appeared in a game for the Tigers. The left-hander has pitched 31 1/3 innings of 2.30 ERA ball over the past two seasons. He didn’t miss enough bats to support the excellent run prevention mark and has been an up-and-down middle reliever. Guenther missed the final three months of the ’25 season working back from hip surgery. Detroit used the non-tender deadline to drop him from the 40-man roster with an eye towards bringing him back on a minor league contract.

They did the same thing with Little, whom they’d claimed off waivers from Pittsburgh a couple weeks earlier. The 27-year-old righty (28 in January) debuted with two appearances for the Dodgers this year. He spent the rest of the season in Triple-A, where he turned in a 4.06 ERA with a modest 20.2% strikeout percentage over 62 innings.

De Jesus, 29, returns to affiliated ball after two seasons in Korea. He spent a year apiece with the Kiwoom Heroes and the KT Wiz. De Jesus worked out of the rotation and posted a sub-4.00 ERA while starting 30 games in both seasons. He struck out 24% of opponents with a 3.81 earned run average in 335 combined frames. The Venezuela native pitched in two MLB games for the Marlins in 2023.

Waites also most recently appeared in the big leagues two years ago. He allowed seven runs in eight innings for the Giants between 2022-23. He underwent elbow surgery late in the ’23 season and has missed most of the past two seasons. The 27-year-old Waites owns a 4.46 ERA in 43 career appearances at the Triple-A level.
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Source: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2025/12/tigers-sign-four-pitchers-to-minor-league-deals.html
 
Tigers Designate Justyn-Henry Malloy For Assignment

To clear a 40-man roster spot for reliever Kyle Finnegan, the Tigers have designated outfielder Justyn-Henry Malloy for assignment. It’s the first DFA in Malloy’s young career. He appeared in 52 games with Detroit last season.

Detroit acquired Malloy and lefty Jake Higginbotham from Atlanta in a December 2022 trade that sent right-hander Joe Jimenez to the Braves. Jimenez has dealt with injury issues, but has provided strong work in the Atlanta bullpen when healthy. The Tigers haven’t had much to show for their end of the deal. Malloy has hit .209 across 357 plate appearances in his two big-league stints with the club. He’s struck out at a massive 32.8% rate at the MLB level. Higginbotham spent two seasons in Detroit’s minor league system, topping out at Triple-A (one game). He signed with San Diego as a minor league free agent last offseason.

The Braves took Malloy in the sixth round of the 2021 draft. He zoomed through the system, reaching Triple-A in 2022. Malloy compiled a sterling 144 wRC+ across three levels that season. MLB.com ranked him seventh among Detroit’s prospects in 2023. He slugged 23 home runs at Triple-A in his first season in the organization. Malloy continued to do damage with Toledo in 2024, though his strikeout rate ticked up to 28%. He earned a promotion in June and spent the majority of the remainder of the season with the Tigers. Malloy showed some power with eight home runs, but he struck out at a massive 37% clip.

Malloy has a good sense of the strike zone, as evidenced by a career 12% walk rate and a sub-20% chase rate. It’s making contact when he does choose to swing that’s been the problem. Malloy had a hefty 36.6% whiff rate in 2024. He improved that number to 29.1% this past season, though that mark was still well below average. Malloy trimmed his strikeout rate to a reasonable 25.2% in 2025. Unfortunately, his batted ball metrics fell off. Malloy posted a decent 37.8% hard-hit rate in his debut year, but it tumbled to 31.1% this season. After recording a double-digit barrel rate in 2024, that mark plummeted to 4.1% this year.

Most of Malloy’s at-bats came as a DH or pinch-hitter in 2025. He’s totaled -4 Outs Above Average in his career. Malloy came up as a third baseman, but he’s only played the outfield since joining the Detroit organization. He was a bat-first prospect, and he’s trending toward a DH-only future.

Photo courtesy of Junfu Han, Imagn Images
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Source: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2025/12/tigers-designate-justyn-henry-malloy-for-assignment.html
 
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