Tigers agree to record 3-year, $115 million deal with left-hander Framber Valdez

DETROIT — The Detroit Tigers have reached an agreement with free-agent left-hander Framber Valdez on a three-year, $115 million contract that would give him the highest average annual value for a left-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball history, according to multiple people familiar with the deal.

The agreement, which includes a player opt-out after the second season, is pending a physical and has not yet been announced by the club. Terms were confirmed by several outlets on Feb. 4, including ESPN and MLB.com, citing league and team sources.

If completed, the contract would pay Valdez an average of about $38.3 million per season, surpassing the annual salaries on previous marquee deals for left-handers such as Blake Snell, David Price and Chris Sale. It also would make the 32-year-old Dominican native the highest-paid Latin American pitcher by average annual value.

For Detroit, which has not won the American League Central since 2014 and only recently emerged from a lengthy rebuild, the agreement signals an aggressive push into a win-now phase built around elite starting pitching.

Tigers push in behind a new 1–2 punch

The Tigers finished 87-75 in 2025, claimed an AL Wild Card berth and advanced past the Cleveland Guardians before losing a five-game Division Series to the Seattle Mariners. They did it largely on the back of left-hander Tarik Skubal, who has won the last two AL Cy Young Awards.

Adding Valdez would give Detroit one of the strongest top-of-the-rotation pairings in the sport. A projected starting staff of Skubal, Valdez, right-handers Reese Olson, Jack Flaherty and Casey Mize would represent a sharp departure from the thin groups that defined the club’s rebuilding years.

Valdez has been one of the most durable and productive starters in baseball since he moved into the Houston Astros’ rotation full time in 2020. Over the last five seasons, he has logged a 3.23 earned run average across nearly 1,000 innings, with elite ground-ball rates and a workload that rivaled any pitcher in the American League. He has topped 30 starts in three of the last four seasons and thrown at least 176 innings in each of them.

In 2025, his final season in Houston, Valdez went 13-11 with a 3.66 ERA and 187 strikeouts in 192 innings over 31 starts. He was one of the league’s best pitchers in the first half, going 10-4 with a 2.75 ERA, before fading to a 5.20 ERA in the second half as command wavered.

Despite that uneven finish and a late-season incident in which Valdez hit his catcher with a pitch after a disputed sign — an episode both players denied was intentional — teams valued his overall track record. Since 2021, he has ranked near the top of MLB in wins, innings and quality starts and has finished in the top 10 of AL Cy Young voting three times.

Valdez’s postseason resume also factors into his price. During Houston’s 2022 title run, he went 3-0 with a 1.44 ERA in the playoffs, including two strong starts in the World Series. Astros manager Dusty Baker repeatedly turned to him as the staff’s stabilizer that October.

Contract structure fits new pitching economics

People with knowledge of the agreement said the deal includes a $20 million signing bonus and some deferred money, details of which were not immediately clear. The player opt-out after the 2027 season would allow Valdez to return to free agency entering his age-35 season if he remains healthy and effective.

The structure mirrors a broader trend in the starting-pitching market: shorter terms with outsized annual salaries and player-friendly opt-outs that let pitchers “bet on themselves.” Recent contracts for arms such as Snell, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander have followed that pattern, reflecting teams’ reluctance to guarantee six or seven years to pitchers in their 30s while still paying top-of-market rates to secure front-line talent.

Detroit, which historically has operated well below luxury-tax levels, will move into a different spending tier with Valdez on the books. Even before the agreement, public projections had the Tigers moving toward the top of the AL Central in competitive-balance-tax payroll. Adding roughly $38 million per year will likely make them, on a year-to-year basis, one of the biggest spenders in a division more often defined by restraint.

The Tigers also will pay a draft-cost penalty. Because the Astros extended Valdez a $22.025 million qualifying offer for 2026 that he declined, Detroit must forfeit its Competitive Balance Round B pick, currently projected at No. 69 overall, while Houston will receive a compensatory selection after the fourth round.

A record deal for a nontraditional ace

Valdez’s ascent to record-level earnings is notable in part because he does not fit the traditional physical profile of a top-of-the-rotation starter. Listed at 5-foot-11, he relies on a heavy sinker, a sharp curveball and weak contact rather than overpowering velocity. He has led the majors in ground-ball rate in multiple seasons.

His path to this point has been unconventional. Raised in Palenque, Dominican Republic, Valdez has said he is right-handed in daily life but taught himself to throw left-handed as a boy after learning how rare southpaw pitchers were. He signed with Houston as an amateur free agent in 2015 and did not reach the majors until August 2018.

Valdez has spoken often about his Christian faith and his desire to give back. He has donated to build a church in his hometown and described his career as a way to lift his family out of poverty. During the 2022 World Series, cameras showed him embracing his father at Minute Maid Park; it was the first time his father, long afraid of flying, had seen him pitch in person.

With this agreement, Valdez becomes the latest Dominican pitcher to reach the top of baseball’s pay scale, following a line that includes Pedro Martínez, Bartolo Colón and more recently Sandy Alcantara. While hitters from Latin America have signed some of the sport’s largest contracts in recent years, from Juan Soto to Fernando Tatis Jr. and Ronald Acuña Jr., pitchers from the region have been slower to reach comparable annual salaries.

Skubal arbitration looms over Tigers’ splash

The timing of Detroit’s move throws a spotlight on its relationship with Skubal, the 29-year-old homegrown ace who has one more year of club control.

Earlier this winter, the Tigers and Skubal failed to reach agreement on a 2026 salary and proceeded to an arbitration hearing. According to filings disclosed through league channels, Skubal asked for $32 million, while the team submitted a figure of $19 million — a record gap for an arbitration case.

An arbitration panel will choose one of the two numbers; there is no middle ground. Hearings typically conclude in February.

The optics are unavoidable: as the team haggles with Skubal over an eight-figure difference, it has reached terms with Valdez on a contract that would pay him more per year than any left-hander in history. Front offices often stress that arbitration decisions and free-agent pursuits are separate processes, but agents and players around the league tend to view them in the same frame.

Skubal is eligible for free agency after the 2026 season. Club officials have previously indicated they would at least listen to trade interest if they cannot extend him. A rotation topped by Skubal and Valdez gives Detroit a chance to contend immediately, but it also underscores that the team’s current window could be narrow if neither pitcher is signed long term.

Astros stay the course on spending limits

For Houston, Valdez’s expected departure continues a pattern under owner Jim Crane of allowing stars to leave rather than meeting or exceeding nine-figure demands, particularly for pitchers.

The Astros offered Valdez only the one-year qualifying offer at $22.025 million. Under Crane, they have never guaranteed more than $85 million to a starting pitcher, and their largest pitching contract to date went to closer Josh Hader on a five-year, $95 million deal. Houston previously saw George Springer, Carlos Correa, Justin Verlander, Alex Bregman and Kyle Tucker depart for larger contracts elsewhere.

Club officials have defended that approach by pointing to the strength of their player development system and the flexibility preserved by avoiding long-term pitching commitments. To cover Valdez’s innings, they have brought in right-hander Tatsuya Imai from Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball and right-hander Mike Burrows, and will lean more heavily on internal arms such as Hunter Brown and Cristian Javier.

A different identity in Detroit

Detroit has spent most of the last decade shedding payroll and stockpiling prospects after its veteran-laden teams of the early 2010s fell short of a championship. The past two seasons have marked a turn, as a young core led by Skubal, outfielder Riley Greene and first baseman Spencer Torkelson pushed the club back into contention.

This winter, the Tigers exercised Flaherty’s $20 million player option, kept second baseman Gleyber Torres via a one-year qualifying-offer agreement and added veteran relievers Kenley Jansen and Kyle Finnegan. None of those moves, however, approached the scale of the Valdez deal.

If the agreement is finalized, it will mark the moment Detroit re-enters the sport’s high-stakes arms race with a clear identity: a franchise willing to pay a record price for outs on the mound, convinced that in a balanced division and an era of fragile pitching, that is the surest way back to October.