Angels lefty Reid Detmers hit the 15-day injured list due to elbow inflammation 13 days ago but was transferred to the 60-day IL the following day, formally ending his season. There was some ominous uncertainty surrounding his status, as he underwent an MRI shortly after the IL placement but there was no update from the team. The southpaw himself gave some good news to the Angels beat yesterday, revealing that the MRI showed no structural damage (via Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register). Detmers is planning to have a normal offseason.
Perhaps more interestingly, the 26-year-old Detmers indicated that while he’ll pitch in whatever role the team envisions for him, his personal preference would be to return to the rotation after spending the 2025 season in the bullpen for the first time.
“All I’ve ever known is starting,” said Detmers when asked about his role. “I would like to start again. I think taking from what I learned this year about my mentality and stuff like that, I think I can transfer that over to starting and have a good year starting. But at the same time, it’s up to them. I’m willing to do whatever they want me to do, like I said at the beginning of the year. Anything that helps the team win.”
Detmers, the No. 10 pick in the 2020 draft, spent the 2022-24 seasons in the Halos’ rotation, generally pitching well in ’22-’23 before struggling mightily in ’24. During those first two full seasons as a starter, the Louisville product posted a combined 4.15 earned run average with a 24.5% strikeout rate, a 9% walk rate, a 36.4% ground-ball rate and an average of 1.04 homers per nine frames.
The 2024 season was a nightmare, however. Detmers made just 17 starts in the majors and was rocked for a 6.70 ERA. Though his strikeout rate actually improved (27.9%) and his walk rate held close to prior levels (9.7%), Detmers couldn’t escape the long ball. He averaged a whopping 1.85 homers per nine innings. After seeing just 10.3% of the fly-balls he allowed become home runs in 2022-23, that number exploded to 17.1% in 2024.
Detmers’ batted-ball metrics didn’t change much; his average exit velocity held at the same level as the previous season and his opponents’ hard-hit rate even dropped a couple percentage points. But when Detmers misfired in 2024, he often missed badly. A poor Angels defense didn’t do him any favors — he had a career-worst .357 average on balls in play last year — but Detmers’ primary flaw was being far too susceptible to maximum-damage contact on pitches that missed over the heart of the plate. His changeup, in particular, was hit hard. He struggled enough that the Halos even optioned him to Triple-A, but home runs were an even larger issue there (2.08 HR/9) as he pitched to a 5.54 ERA with the Angels’ Salt Lake affiliate.
A move to the ’pen in 2025 seemed to revitalize Detmers. The 6’2″ lefty has worked exclusively in relief this season and turned in a solid 3.96 ERA in 63 2/3 innings. Detmers’ average fastball unsurprisingly jumped when working in short relief, climbing from 93.8 mph in 2024 to 95.8 mph this year. His already strong 13% swinging-strike rate spiked to 14.6%, which helped fuel a career-best 30.1% strikeout rate. Most critically, the home run troubles that plagued Detmers in 2024 abated. He saw a roughly league-average 12.2% of his fly-balls leave the yard, but thanks to a big uptick in grounders (44.6%), that only translated to 0.85 homers per nine frames.
On the one hand, the move to relief producing nearly career-best results is a strong point in favor of keeping Detmers in the bullpen. On the other, he was an effective starter in 2022-23, and this year’s improved results could be attributable to more than just the role change. Detmers shelved his changeup, narrowing his repertoire to three pitches: four-seamer, slider, curveball. He threw the four-seamer at the same levels as in the past but leaned more heavily on that pair of breaking balls (and very occasionally tinkered with a two-seamer).
Opponents absolutely teed off on Detmers’ changeup in 2024, batting .351 and slugging .544 against the pitch. For the Angels, it’s probably hard not to wonder whether a return to the rotation with this altered plan of attack could bring about the best of both worlds. Detmers’ heater would surely drop a mile or two if he stretched back out, but perhaps ditching that changeup and working with a tighter arsenal could avoid some of last year’s alarming home run woes.
The Angels aren’t exactly deep in starting pitching. Yusei Kikuchi and Jose Soriano give them a solid starting point in the rotation, but veterans Tyler Anderson and Kyle Hendricks are free agents. Young arms like Jack Kochanowicz, Caden Dana, Mitch Farris and Sam Aldegheri have all gotten looks in the majors this year but haven’t cemented themselves in the rotation mix moving forward. In the case of Kochanowicz, the opposite may even be true; he was torched for a 6.81 ERA in 111 innings while working with one of the game’s lowest strikeout rates.
Presumably, the Angels will again be in the rotation market this winter, as they were last offseason when signing Kikuchi and Hendricks. If Halos brass thinks a shift back to the rotation for Detmers could pan out, however, that’d lessen some of the urgency and general need for starting pitching this winter. Of course, it’d also only enhance the need to bolster a bullpen that’ll see Kenley Jansen, Luis García, Andrew Chafin and Hunter Strickland become free agents at season’s end.