The Dodgers are among several teams that have been showing early interest in free agent reliever Raisel Iglesias, reports Francys Romero of BeisbolFR.com. Romero noted earlier in the day that talks on the relief market have been active at the GM Meetings, so much so that there could be some early movement.
Iglesias, who’ll turn 36 in January, has spent the past three and a half seasons closing games in Atlanta. He originally signed a four-year, $58MM with the Angels but was dumped off to the Braves just a few months into that contract after the ’22 Halos got out to an awful start.
The 2025 season began in rocky fashion for Iglesias. While he was still missing bats and limiting walks early in the year, he was wildly and uncharacteristically homer-prone. Iglesias allowed seven round-trippers through his first 24 innings (2.63 HR/9) en route to a grisly 6.75 ERA. He looked to be potentially on his way to a lost season, but the former All-Star not only righted the ship in early June — he went on to pitch as one of MLB’s most effective relievers the rest of the way.
In his final 43 1/3 innings, Iglesias posted a dominant 1.25 earned run average. He punched out 30.4% of his opponents in that time and issued walks at a tidy 6.3% clip. The home run pendulum swung in the other direction, as he yielded just one long ball from June 9 onward (0.21 HR/9).
It was a season of extremes, but Iglesias finished the year with a strong 3.21 ERA, a 27.4% strikeout rate, a 6% walk rate and a 1.07 HR/9 mark. All of those rate stats are loosely in line with his career marks. His 14.7% swinging-strike rate on the season is down a bit from previous years but still several percentage points north of average (tied for 26th among 147 qualified relievers in 2025).
A lack of bullpen depth nearly cost the Dodgers in the World Series. They advanced through the first few rounds of postseason play on the back of dominant starting pitching from Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Shohei Ohtani and Tyler Glasnow, which helped to mask a bullpen that was hampered by injuries to relievers like Evan Phillips, Brusdar Graterol, Brock Stewart and Tanner Scott (who had a disappointing first year in Los Angeles overall). Roki Sasaki stepped up as a vital late-inning arm, and the club got terrific work out of lefty Alex Vesia as well — at least until a family emergency kept him from appearing in the World Series. In the end, with everything on the line, it was Yamamoto recording the final out — just one day after tossing 96 pitches in a Game 6 start.
As such, it’s hardly a surprise to see the Dodgers linked to some high-profile bullpen arms in the early stages of the offseason. In addition to Iglesias, they’ve already been tied to Devin Williams. With the length of Iglesias’ contract likely capped by age in a way that’s not the case with Williams, Iglesias seems a likelier candidate to sign early in the offseason. Signing Iglesias certainly wouldn’t preclude the deep-pocketed Dodgers for other significant investments in the bullpen, but he’d be a quick first step to deepening a relief corps that felt too thin throughout the playoffs.