The Detroit Tigers front office will have their hands full as the offseason is looming. Manager AJ Hinch and everyone on the roster are certainly worried about the task at hand, which is a deep run in October, but several players on the roster are playing for their future jobs as well.
Detroit made several trades before the trade deadline in July, and it was mostly an attempt to bolster the starting pitching depth and add a few pieces to the bullpen. Now that it's been a couple of months since then, we can assess which moves were good and which players may be on their way out of Detroit.
What will Detroit do with Chris Paddack?
The Tigers acquired Chris Paddack from the Minnesota Twins before the deadline, and he's been very inconsistent since, and has even had to be moved into a bullpen role.
FanSided's Katrina Stebbins believes that the last two weeks of the MLB regular season may be the last for Paddack in a Tigers' uniform:
"Paddack's future with the team has a lot to do with whether or not the bullpen experiment works out with him, and if he's willing to stay in the bullpen going forward. His first appearance as a reliever went sideways — he gave up six earned runs in 1 1/3 innings — but he notched his first career save for three hitless innings against the Yankees on Sept. 9."
Stebbins also mentioned there likely won't be a super large market for Paddack come season's end. That makes sense, considering his ERA is 5.34 in over 140 innings this season.
With the Tigers specifically, he's thrown 37.1 innings and has an ERA of 6.51 in nine appearances.
Detroit could give Paddack another chance, but at this point in his career, he's likely restricted to just the bullpen and would have a mop-up role in either blowouts or when a team is up by several runs.
This is a similar situation with fellow reliever Tommy Kahnle, where it might just be smarter to cut ties and see what the outside market has in store for them.