Former Tigers left-hander Bryan Sammons has signed a one-year cope with Nippon Skilled Baseball’s Chiba Lotte Marines, per bulletins from the staff and from Sammons’ company, GSI.
Sammons made his massive league debut as a 29-year-old rookie this previous season, pitching 27 1/3 innings of three.62 ERA ball for the Tigers throughout their Cinderella push to the playoffs. The 6’4″ southpaw averaged 91.5 mph on his heater, fanned 17.3% of his opponents and logged a 8.7% stroll charge. Sammons spent the majority of his 2024 season in Triple-A Toledo, the place he pitched 102 innings with a 4.15 ERA, 23.1% strikeout charge and 10% stroll charge. Detroit outrighted Sammons off the 40-man roster after the season, and he turned a minor league free agent.
The transfer to Japan is the newest step in the kind of baseball odyssey for which all followers like to cheer. The Athletic’s Cody Stavenhagen penned a improbable have a look at Sammons’ journey from under-recruited excessive schooler to an eighth-round decide of the Twins who wound up being launched each by Minnesota and by Houston. (Readers are extremely inspired to take a look at Stavenhagen’s piece in full.) Sammons, who graduated from Western Carolina with an engineering diploma, contemplated giving up baseball fully to pursue a extra conventional profession earlier than taking one final shot and pitching within the Atlantic League. Simply over a 12 months later, he was on the mound at Comerica Park.
Whereas Sammons is becoming a member of the identical staff for which Roki Sasaki has starred in his NPB profession, he’s successfully taking the place of veteran lefty Dallas Keuchel, who began eight video games for the Marines within the second half of the 2024 NPB season. The Marines introduced in early December that Keuchel had been launched and was a free agent. Sammons’ position shall be decided, however supervisor Masahito Yoshii mentioned his hope is that Sammons can pitch out of the rotation in 2025 (hyperlink through Yahoo Japan).
