Reid Detmers has turned the Angels’ latest gamble into one of the best stories in the American League. After spending 2025 in the bullpen, he is back in the rotation and has become a top 10 starting pitcher in 2026, giving Los Angeles its best arm by a wide margin.
That is the kind of turnaround that changes how a club thinks about a pitcher, and it is why Detmers is suddenly a name worth checking again. He has already piled up 2.0 WAR this season and, through this point in 2026, has outperformed everyone else in the Angels’ rotation, including José Soriano, who came out hot in April before cooling off in recent weeks.
The path here was anything but linear. Detmers flashed real talent early, throwing a no-hitter in May 2022 and posting a 3.79 FIP in his first full major league season. But he was sent down for about a month that summer to work on things, then did not make a real leap in 2023 even as the strikeouts rose, because the walks and home runs rose too. By June 2024, he was back in Triple-A, and when he returned in September he got five final starts before the Angels made the move that seemed to define him: a shift to the bullpen in 2025.
That move looked like a rescue plan for a pitcher whose career was heading in the wrong direction. It also fit what the Angels were seeing at the time. Detmers made 61 relief appearances that season and posted a 3.12 FIP, while his fastball ticked up from 93.8 mph in 2024 to 95.8 mph out of the bullpen. Even then, the team believed the relief work was not the end point. Ron Washington said in June 2025 that the bullpen stretch was just a prelude to getting Detmers back in the rotation, and he said the left-hander would be a force to be reckoned with once that happened.
The unusual part is that it has actually worked. From 1962 through 2025, only 20 pitchers had logged at least 30 relief appearances in one season and then at least 10 starts the next, and Detmers is now the 21st to do it through 2026. That puts him in rare company, but it also leaves one question hanging over the Angels: whether this version of Detmers is a genuine rotation answer or another sharp stretch in a career that has already swung hard more than once.
For now, the answer is the one the Angels were hoping for when they sent him to the bullpen. Detmers has saved his career again, and the next test is simple: how long he can stay this good once the league gets a fuller read on him.
