The Detroit Tigers and the Los Angeles Dodgers had a deal in place that would’ve sent Eduardo Rodriguez to the West Coast, but the left-handed starter reportedly turned down the deal, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan.
Rodriguez has a unique contract that has a 10-team no-trade clause, which the Dodgers are included in, and Rodriguez decided to exercise his option, meaning the deal is now dead, Passan reports.
A few minutes after the 6 p.m. trade deadline passed Tuesday, a source confirmed to the Free Press that Rodriguez would not be traded.
The Athletic’s Fabian Ardaya reports that Rodriguez expressed a desire to stay closer to his family on the East Coast.
The lefty veteran is having arguably the best year of his career, posting a 2.95 ERA and a 6-5 record in 15 starts, only being interrupted by a finger injury in May that sidelined him for multiple weeks. Rodriguez returned on July 5 and hasn’t been as sharp as he was before he was injured, but has certainly shown enough to make him one of the top available names on the market.
The other complicating factor is the structure of Rodriguez’s contract, which allows him to opt out this summer and become a free agent. Rodriguez signed a five-year, $77 million contract with the Tigers in November 2021, but could leave $49 million on the table to become a free agent again this offseason, or if he was injured, could opt-in and the team who got him would be on the hook for the remainder of the contract.
Before trading Rodriguez, the Tigers moved fellow starting pitcher Michael Lorenzen, the team’s representative at the All-Star game this summer, to the Philadelphia Phillies in exchange for Hao-Yu Lee, a 20-year-old right-handed hitter from Taiwan.