Marlins To Sign Pete Fairbanks

The Marlins and reliever Pete Fairbanks are in agreement on a contract, according to Will Sammon of the Athletic. It is a one-year, $13MM contract for the Republik Sports client, according to Jeff Passan of ESPN. Per Mark Feinsand of MLB.com, the deal includes a $1MM signing bonus and another $1MM in incentives based on appearances. Fairbanks will also receive a bonus of $500,000 if he is traded. The deal is pending a physical.

Fairbanks, who turned 32 last week, is coming off a 2.83 ERA in 60 1/3 innings for the Rays in 2025. Tampa held an $11MM club option on his services for 2026, but they instead paid him a $1MM buyout. We at MLBTR ranked him No. 44 on our Top 50 Free Agents list and projected a two-year, $18MM contract. He now heads to the Marlins on a shorter deal with a higher annual salary and figures to be the team’s closer next year.

The right-hander debuted in 2019 and has pitched 265 1/3 innings with a 3.19 ERA in his seven seasons with the Rays. In that time, Fairbanks has struck out 30.0% of hitters against a 9.3% walk rate thanks to an upper-90s fastball and a mid-80s slider which he uses 44.1% of the time. He also gets groundballs at an above-average 45.1% rate and generally keeps the ball in the park, allowing just 0.81 HR/9.

He has also frequently dealt with injuries, making seven trips to the injured list from 2021-24. He had better health luck this year, as he avoided the injured list and set a career high with 60 1/3 innings pitched. When he’s healthy, Fairbanks is a dominant back-end reliever. In 151 innings as the Rays’ closer from 2023-25, he had a 2.98 ERA while posting a 18.9% K-BB rate and earning 75 saves, which was 12th-highest in the league in that span.

That largely continued in 2025, albeit with a drop in Fairbanks’ advanced metrics. After striking out 37.0% of hitters as recently as 2023, that has fallen to 23.8% in 2024 and 24.2% in 2025. That is still plenty effective, especially as he has lowered his walk rate from 10.9% in 2023 to 7.4% this year. However, it has also come with an uptick in average exit velocity. Hitters averaged 85.7 mph off the bat against Fairbanks in 2023, but that rose to 90.2 mph in 2025. Meanwhile, his four-seamer now sits at 97.3 mph after averaging 98.9 mph in 2023.

Nonetheless, the fact that the current version of Fairbanks has better-than-average strikeout and walk rates with 90th-percentile fastball velocity means that he is still an effective reliever. If anything, the move by the Rays to decline his option was financially motivated. Tampa Bay’s payroll usually ranks near the bottom of the league (29th out of 30 in 2025). They previously signed Fairbanks to a three-year, $12MM extension in January 2023. While $4MM was a comfortable price range for the team, $11MM may have simply been too high a price to commit to one reliever, even one as effective as Fairbanks.

Indeed, the club tried to trade Fairbanks after the season ended, but they couldn’t find any takers. That ended up being a moot point, as he garnered plenty of interest from teams around the league. The Marlins, Diamondbacks, White Sox, and Tigers were publicly known to be interested in the right-hander. Miami always seemed like a logical fit, given the connection between Fairbanks and president of baseball operations Peter Bendix from their time with the Rays.

With the addition of Fairbanks, the Marlins have fortified a bullpen which ranked 23rd in the league with a 4.27 ERA and 17th with a 14.1% K-BB rate in 2025. The best performer of the bunch was right-hander Ronny Henriquez. The 25-year-old pitched 73 innings over 69 appearances this year with a 2.22 ERA and a 32.3% strikeout rate. His 1.3 fWAR was a team high for relievers, while his peripheral stats were slightly higher than his ERA but still excellent. He also earned seven saves throughout the season. It was the best possible outcome for the Marlins, who acquired Henriquez as a waiver pickup last offseason. Unfortunately, news broke two days ago that the righty underwent an internal brace procedure on his throwing elbow. As a result, he will miss the entire 2026 season.

Including Henriquez, the team got a good amount of volume from its bullpen in 2025. Seven Marlins relievers pitched at least 50 innings, with Tyler Phillips’s 77 2/3 innings leading the group. He pitched to a 2.78 ERA and got groundballs at a well-above-average 55.6% rate, albeit with just a 16.6% strikeout rate and middling peripherals. Calvin Faucher and Luke Bachar had ERAs of 3.28 and 3.78, respectively, but with expected values in the mid-4.00s. Meanwhile, Anthony Bender, Cade Gibson, and Valente Bellozo had solid groundball rates but below-average strikeout numbers. The signing of Fairbanks upgrades the group with more velocity, strikeouts, and groundballs while covering for Henriquez’s injury and taking pressure off the younger arms.

According to RosterResource, the signing of Fairbanks brings the Marlins’ projected payroll to $73MM, a slight bump from $70MM in 2025. That figure includes just over $15MM for eight arbitration-eligible players, with $2MM of that going to the recently-signed Christopher Morel (previously non-tendered by the Rays). So far, Morel and Fairbanks have been the club’s only big-league free agent signings, though the club is reportedly willing to spend more than usual this offseason.

Photos courtesy of Nathan Ray Seebeck and Kim Klement, Imagn Images