With two procedural changes on Sunday, the Detroit Tigers rearranged their pitching depth for the last few months of the season by swapping out left-handers on their 40-man roster.
Following his hip surgery last week, Sean Guenther was put on the 60-day disabled list after being recalled from Triple-A Toledo. Guenther had been placed on the minor league injured list before. The Tigers utilized a 40-man roster slot that was created by elevating him and moving him to the MLB disabled list to sign fellow lefty PJ Poulin.
Poulin was promptly optioned back to the Mud Hens by the Tigers when they signed his contract with Toledo and added him to their 40-man roster.
The shuffle—why? There was a deadline to either add Poulin to the roster or give him permission to explore possibilities elsewhere since he had an upward-mobility clause. He was kept in the system by the Tigers.
In March of last year, the Tigers paid cash to the Colorado Rockies for Poulin.
The Rockies selected Poulin, who turns 29 this month, in the eleventh round of the 2018 draft out of the University of Connecticut. This season, in 36 1/3 innings pitched for the Mud Hens, he has a 3.72 ERA, walking 14 and striking out 54.
In his last 21 innings for the Tigers in 2024, Guenther, 29, went 3-0 with a 0.86 ERA. Perhaps the series’ most important outs came when he got Kyle Tucker to ground into a 4-6-3 double play in the seventh inning of Game 2 of the Wild Card Series at Houston, ending a threat.
Throughout his time in the major leagues, he has struggled with injuries and had more inconsistent performance in 2025, giving up six earned runs on ten hits in 10 1/3 innings.
