Report: Detroit Tigers Targeting Former All-Star Pitcher

The Detroit Tigers may be quietly positioning themselves for one of the more intriguing pitching reunions on the free-agent market.

According to Jon Heyman, the Tigers are one of several teams showing interest in right-hander Lucas Giolito. And if Giolito ends up in Detroit, he wouldn’t just be joining a competitive rotation; he’d be reuniting with a familiar face from his past: Jack Flaherty, his high school teammate at Harvard-Westlake in California.

Yes, that Harvard-Westlake. The same baseball factory that seems to produce big-league arms like it’s an assembly line.

Giolito, now 31, is coming off a solid 2025 season in which he logged 145 innings with a 3.41 ERA, 121 strikeouts, and a 1.29 WHIP. Not ace-level dominance, but exactly the kind of steady, durable starter contenders love to stack in the middle of a rotation.

And that’s where the Tigers come in.

Detroit’s pitching staff is already trending in the right direction, with young arms developing and the front office clearly signaling that it’s time to supplement, not just wait. Adding a veteran like Giolito would give the rotation another proven innings-eater with postseason experience and a track record of missing bats.

But the Flaherty angle makes it even more compelling.

Giolito and Flaherty were once two teenage phenoms sharing the same high school mound, dreaming of the big leagues. Fast forward a decade, and the idea of them anchoring the same major-league rotation in Detroit feels like the kind of full-circle storyline baseball fans eat up.

It’s also not just sentimental. Giolito’s profile fits what the Tigers need:

• A right-handed starter with swing-and-miss stuff
• A durable arm who can take the ball every fifth day
• A veteran presence who knows how to navigate lineups multiple times
• Someone who doesn’t need to be “the ace” to be valuable

At 6-foot-6 and 245 pounds, Giolito still has the power frame teams covet, and his 2025 bounce-back showed there’s plenty left in the tank.

Nothing is imminent, and Detroit is far from the only team circling. But this is the kind of move that would quietly signal something important:

The Tigers aren’t just building anymore.
They’re starting to add.

And if that addition comes with a built-in chemistry boost thanks to a long-standing Flaherty-Giolito connection? All the better.

The post Report: Detroit Tigers Targeting Former All-Star Pitcher appeared first on Detroit Sports Nation.