A situation like this just shows the harsh reality of baseball and how consistent you need to be to just stay at the major league level. For a minute, it seemed like the Tigers had something special with Alex Lange, who definitely peaked in the first half of the 2023 season, even winning American League reliever of the month in May of that year, striking out 17 batters in just 10.2 innings. There was a lot to like. He had an upper-90s fastball and a Dynamite swing-and-miss curveball that was an effective put-away pitch. But this is an organization that preaches strike throwing, and Alex Lange simply didn’t do enough of it.
Even before the injury, there were some clear signs of regression, but you figured that Lange would at least have an opportunity to work his way back into Detroit’s bullpen at the big league level. That just never happened. He suffered a lat injury in 2024 and missed well over a year of action. I think the Tigers expected him to at least have an opportunity to pitch his way back into high-leverage in 2025, but he kept experiencing setback after setback. By the time he returned to a big league mound, it felt as though the train had left the station. He was no longer a part of the future.
He made an appearance at Comerica Park in the second half of last season, which was a nice little bookend to his comeback story. You definitely never questioned the guy's heart. There was very clearly a lot of passion there.But that was all she wrote in terms of his time as a Detroit Tiger. Lange is still only 30 years old, so I’m pretty confident that he’ll get another shot as a spring training invite. We’ve had our criticisms with this current regime, but they’ve been very consistent with how they evaluate their pitchers. If you’re not throwing strikes, you will not stay here.
As far as Darnell is concerned, this is what the Tigers like to do. It’s them taking a flyer on a pitcher that they still hope has a little bit of juice. I don’t know if Darnell necessarily had a whole lot of juice to begin with. He has a minimal sample size at the big league level, and that sample size came with the Colorado Rockies, so it’s a little bit hard to judge his effectiveness when he’s pitching innings at Coors Field. The Pirates picked him up, and then he had hip surgery, and now he’s been claimed by the Tigers. 
The minor league numbers are intriguing enough to make you think that maybe the Tigers could mold this guy into something. I’m not personally expecting much. We roll our eyes at Detroit sometimes for how much they like plucking pitchers out of obscurity, but a lot of organizations do this. Adding depth is an essential thing in this game, and if Darnell is able to provide that, then I guess we’ll view it as a win.