Reid Detmers is making the Angels look smarter with every start

Reid Detmers has had a weird baseball journey. A brilliant rookie season that featured a no-hitter gave way to a less-inspired campaign in 2023, before he collapsed and got demoted to back to the minor leagues in 2024. In the interest of saving his career, the Los Angeles Angels moved him to the bullpen last year, and he responded with a 3.12 FIP and 1.2 fWAR that rendered him as one of the more reliable left-handed relievers in baseball.

The Angels, never content with success, suggested that Detmers' transition to the bullpen was a hiatus from the rotation, not a permanent displacement. Former manager Ron Washington made that much clear in 2025; current manager Kurt Suzuki followed through on it here in 2026.

And yet, against all odds, Detmers has returned to being a starter and flourished. Through his first dozen starts this season, he owns a 2.99 FIP and 2.93 xERA, both of which tell a far more convincing story of his dominance than his 4.63 ERA. He's been so good that he's now being mentioned in best-player-available conversations prior to the trade deadline.

Of course, the Halos would be foolish to let him go now. Alongside fellow rotation breakout José Soriano, the 26-year-old southpaw gives the Angels a legitimate building block toward the future.

Reid Detmers has rediscovered the secret sauce to being a good starter

The fun part about Detmers' return to form is that it's exactly that: a return to form. He isn't succeeding because of a new pitch or juiced-up velocity -- he's simply just a better version of the starter Detmers always was.

It's hard to quantify that, but we can look at his Stuff+ and Location+ metrics to see what's changed. The former looks at a pitch's characteristics (i.e., velocity, movement, spin rate, etc.) while the latter looks at how pinpoint a pitcher's command is (adjusted for pitch type and count); both are standardized to 100, meaning any figure over that total is above league average.

Detmers' Stuff+ this year is 104, an 11-point drop from his sojourn in the bullpen and exactly the same as his disastrous 2024 season. Naturally, then, it's his command that has improved. His Location+ sits at 108, a 10-point jump over 2024 and by far his best mark as a starter.

That's reflected in his career-best walk rate (7.6%), which organically lends itself to fewer baserunners. It's a bit cliché, but when you have as much raw talent (and as high of a floor) as Detmers does, sometimes pitching really does come down to just attacking the zone and throwing more strikes.

It's true that putting Detmers back in the rotation after such a successful transition to relief work was always a gamble, but the Angles are being rewarded handsomely for their boldness right now. Perhaps his evolution can set the stage for the next wave great pitching in Anaheim.

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