Tigers Need Rafael Montero to Reclaim His World Series Winning Form
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The Detroit Tigers are rolling the dice that reliever Rafael Montero can figure things out.
The Atlanta Braves traded Rafael Montero to the Tigers in exchange for a minor league infielder, Jim Jarvis. The Tigers will be the third organization that Montero has pitched for this season.
The 34-year-old started the year with the Houston Astros, but only pitched three games before he was traded to the Braves.
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In just over 38 innings as a reliever he has posted a 5.4 ERA and struck out 39 with 23 walks. He has also held opponents to a near career-best .211.
This is the third straight season that the right-hander has posted an ERA of 4.70 or higher. The Tigers traded for hoping that he can be what he was in 2022 with the Astros.
That season he worked as a set-up man and as a part-time closer. He went 5-2 with a 2.37 ERA in 71 games, with 23 holds and 14 saves and 16 chances. Montero was part of the group of Astros pitchers that threw a combined no-hitter in Game 4 of the 2022 World Series.
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Montero has been in the Majors since making his debut in 2014 with the New York Mets. He has primarily been used as a reliever in his career making only 30 starts in the 360 games he has pitched.
Throughout his career he has completed over 500 innings posting a 4.76 ERA. Montero has struck out 498 batters with 233 walks.
Jarvis is still developing and is still a ways from a Major League debut.
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The 25-year-old just stepped up to Double-A ball this season as he was drafted two years ago by Detroit. Some of Detroit's highest-ranked prospects are infielders, so Jarvis may have had a hard time making it to the Majors with the Tigers.
This season he slashed .242/.316/.336 and he has more strikeouts (31) than RBI (29). This was a low risk, potentially high reward, move for the Tigers.
Detroit had quite the rough stretch in July going on a pair of six-game losing streaks, but they turned it around to close the month off with a four-game winning streak and a clean sweep of the Arizona Diamondbacks.
The pitching staff had 11 games this month where they allowed five or more runs to score, with three of those games going into double-digits. Montero could help them address that.
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Maddy Dickens resides in Loveland, Colorado. She grew up with two older brothers, where their lives revolved around sports. She earned a master's degree in business management from Tarleton State University while simultaneously playing basketball and competing in rodeo at the collegiate level. She successfully parlayed a reserve national championship into a professional rodeo career and now stays involved in upper-level athletics by writing for On SI on several different MLB teams' pages, along with some NCAA sites.