You can’t imagine anything other than the sadness Pete Fairbanksdermatologist. The blonde closer has spent almost his entire Major League career with the Rays, recording at least 23 saves in each of the past three seasons. And now, instead of leaving the Sunshine State, he’s traveling even further south to Miami. The 32-year-old Fairbanks has signed a one-year, $13 million contract with the Marlins. He was the last closer available in free agency, and with Ronny Henriquez Out for the season due to a torn UCL, Fairbanks will play a crucial role for a Miami bullpen that finished in the bottom 10 in just about every category you can think of. Will Sammon from The Athletics broke the news while ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported the conditions, and Mark Feinsand of MLB.com reported that the contract included a $1 million signing bonus and another $1 million in incentives. According to AJ Eustace of MLB Trade RumorsFairbanks would also receive a $500,000 bonus if traded.
The move marks a reunion with president of baseball operations Peter Bendix, who previously served as general manager of Tampa Bay. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Fairbanks made it clear that Bendix’s role with the Marlins was part of their call-up. “To hear all the things he’s done during his tenure in Miami, from what I’ve heard before to what I have now, how much things are changing and how much he’s tried to put his stamp on things. I felt like that made it a pretty easy choice, and I’m excited to see the direction he takes.” (Hat tip to Kevin Barral of Fish in first placewho published this quote and the others you’ll read in this article.) Fairbanks also noted that moving just a four-hour drive from Tampa is a blessing, as he and his wife are expecting their third child “basically on opening day.” This is the first All-Star break baby we’ll write in 2026, but I can assure you it won’t be the last.
From 2020 to 2023, Fairbanks was one of the best pitchers in the game at virtually every level. He had a strikeout rate of 35%, the 11th highest among all pitchers (minimum 130 innings pitched). As a result, he ranked top 20 in ERA and top 10 in FIP. He also dealt with a host of injuries, as Jon Becker detailed earlier this week, throwing 27 innings just once in his first four seasons. He has been more consistent since 2023, reaching 46 appearances three years in a row and setting a career record with 61 appearances and 60 1/3 innings in 2025.
Although he has been healthier lately, Fairbanks’ strikeout rate plummeted in 2024. Over the past two seasons, he posted a combined strikeout rate of 24%, not far above league average. He posted a 3.57 ERA in 2024, his worst since his debut in 2019. Although he lowered his ERA to 2.83 in 2025, he was helped by a career-low .239 BABIP. His FIP and other ERA estimators remained in the threes. Fairbanks missed our Top 50 Free Agents list not because he wasn’t good enough, but because the Rays somewhat surprisingly declined his $11 million option for the 2026 season the day after the list came out. He came in at 27th place Baseball prospectus‘ listwhere Ginny Searle cited more reasons for pessimism than optimism. Ginny wasn’t wrong, but Fairbanks also showed some encouraging signs.
Fairbanks has historically thrown a four-seamer and a slider, very rarely mixing a changeup. Over the past two years, the fastball has lost some velocity. It only dropped from 150 km/h to a still very hard 150 km/h, but it also lost some spin efficiency, which cost it a few centimeters of movement. Those changes definitely lowered the stuff model numbers. It went from one of the highest-rated fastballs in the game to slightly below average. However, Fairbanks also raised his arm angle in 2025, and Lance Brozdowski noticed that this was likely the reason Fairbanks was better able to locate the pitch in the upper part of the strike zone. (He always seems to notice that Lance Brozdowski.) The improved location was enough to make the field more valuable than it had been since 2022, according to Baseball Savant’s run values. It had a league-average whiff rate and an eerily high hard hit rate, but it resulted in a lot of pop-ups and grounders and, most importantly, it hit the zone an awful lot. That’s just one season of results, so we have to take it with a grain of salt, but if Fairbanks can continue to locate the fastball this well, it could continue to play even if the velocity continues to drop.
In the previous paragraph I said that Fairbanks historically relied on the four-sifter and the slider, and that adverb was important. At the end of the 2025 season, he added a new pitch, a cutter that pitch models loved. “I’m good at getting to the outside of the ball,” Fairbanks said Wednesday. “Every time I was messing around [Tampa Bay pitching coach Kyle Snyder] pregame I thought, “I’m going to end up throwing whiffle sliders just for fun.” Turns out it scores well, and I can throw it in the zone… It seems like it’s an easy spot for my hand to get into during delivery. As long as we can keep moving the ball [according to] Considering the intent behind it, and it doesn’t stack up with the other breaking balls, I think we should be pretty good.” The results, while extremely limited, were ridiculous. Last year, 273 pitchers threw at least 25 cutters. Among them, Fairbanks and his cutter ranked 16th in whiff rate and first in run value, xwOBA and barrel speed. Now we’re talking about a very small sample here. Fairbanks threw only 42 cutters. Only nine of they came into play and five of those nine were hit hard. But this is exactly what stuff models are for; they give a quick snapshot of a field based on its underlying characteristics, and a number of them panicked about the field.
You are not a FanGraphs member
It looks like you are not yet a FanGraphs member (or not logged in). We are not angry, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we get back to it, we’d like to point out some good reasons why you should become a member.
1. Ad-free viewing! We won’t bother you with this ad or any other.
2. Unlimited items! Non-members may only read 10 free articles per month. Members are never cut off.
3. Dark Mode and Classic Mode!
4. Custom dashboards for player pages! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data export! Export our projections and scoreboards for your personal projects.
6. Delete the photos on the homepage! (Honestly, this doesn’t sound that great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our members what they want.)
7. More Steamer Projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context-neutral projections available to members only.
8. Receive FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized end-of-year overview! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how it compares to other members. Don’t be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our members provide us with crucial resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you’ll consider a membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been a really long sales pitch, so we’ve also removed all other ads in this article. We didn’t want to overdo it.
Fairbanks offers many risks. The cutter is exciting but unproven. The fastball command may or may not stick. He is entering his age-32 season and he has a long injury history. Things are starting to pick up, and the strikeouts have done the same. Still, he was one of the better relievers on the market and he’s going to a Marlins team that really needs him even if he regresses to the league-average form he showed in 2024.
#Pete #Fairbanks #kind #fish