The Rays have declined their $11MM option on reliever Pete Fairbanks, reports ESPN’s Jeff Passan. He’s now a free agent.

Fairbanks has spent almost all of his big league career in Tampa Bay. The Rays acquired him from the Rangers in a swap for outfield prospect Nick Solak in 2019. It worked out beautifully for the Rays, as Fairbanks has been one of the better late-game arms in the sport over the past six seasons. He carries a 2.87 earned run average in nearly 250 innings going back to the start of the 2020 season.

Earlier in his career, Fairbanks posted massive strikeout rates to match the excellent run prevention. He punched out nearly 35% of batters faced from 2020-23, fanning no fewer than 29% of opponents in each season. That has dropped significantly over the last two seasons. Fairbanks has posted a strikeout rate around 24% in consecutive years. He got swinging strikes on 12.6% of his offerings this past season. Both marks are still good but only a little higher than the league average 22.8% strikeout rate and 11.5% swinging strike percentage for relievers.

Fairbanks remains a very good closer despite the drop in whiffs. He’s coming off a 2.83 ERA across 60 1/3 innings. He went 27-32 in save chances and has picked up at least 23 saves in each of the past three years. Fairbanks’ velocity has backed up slightly from his 2022-23 peak when he was averaging north of 99 MPH on his heater. Even with that “regression,” he throws harder than 97 on average with a plus mid-80s slider. Fairbanks has missed time in his career with lat and forearm issues but didn’t spend any time on the injured list this year.

The dip in strikeouts evidently deterred teams enough that they didn’t want to invest in Fairbanks this early in the offseason. His $11MM option always seemed likely to be too rich for the Rays’ taste. Still, it registers as a surprise that the Rays were apparently unable to find a trade partner. Fairbanks was never going to net a huge return as a pricey rental reliever, but it seems no one was even willing to part with a mid-tier prospect to exercise the option themselves.

That instead sends him to free agency in advance of his age-32 season. It’s rare but not entirely unheard of for a player to sign for more money as a free agent than he would’ve made had he been tendered an arbitration contract. Fairbanks could find a two-year deal that pays less than $11MM annually but comes with a higher overall guarantee.

A one-year deal in the $11MM range is also possible. Fairbanks is better than José Leclerc, who commanded $10MM from the A’s last winter. The Orioles have made consecutive $9MM commitments to Andrew Kittredge. There may be teams that value Fairbanks as a $10-12MM arm but didn’t want to tie that money up within the first five days of the offseason. He joins Ryan Helsley, Devin Williams, Kyle Finnegan and Luke Weaver among the middle tiers of free agent closers.