The Angels made it official on August 15, adding right-hander Michael Fulmer to the active roster in a move confirmed across the league via MLB Trade Rumors.
It caps a wild couple of weeks for the 33-year-old journeyman. Fulmer signed a minor league deal with the Angels earlier in the week, threw just 1 appearance for Triple-A Salt Lake, and got the call to the majors almost immediately. To clear a 40-man spot, the Angels shipped lefty Sammy Peralta down to Triple-A and moved catcher Sebastian Rivero to the 60-day IL.
For anyone who hasn't followed Fulmer's career lately, this is a real full-circle moment. He broke in with Detroit and won AL Rookie of the Year in 2016, then made the All-Star team in 2017. From there it was one arm injury after another — Tommy John surgery in 2019, multiple setbacks that pushed him to full-time relief work starting in 2022, and a lost 2024 season entirely due to elbow surgery.
He resurfaced last year with brief stints for the Red Sox and Cubs before landing at Sacramento, the Giants' Triple-A affiliate, this season. There, he was arguably the best reliever nobody was talking about — a 2.98 ERA with a 29.1% strikeout rate across 37 appearances and 10 saves, according to MLB Trade Rumors. That kind of production apparently wasn't enough to crack San Francisco's bullpen, which is how he ended up a free agent for the Angels to scoop up.
For the Angels, it's a low-cost, low-risk swing for bullpen depth in the middle of August — the kind of move that either quietly pays off down the stretch or gets buried in a transaction log. Given Fulmer's track record of turning up healthy and effective when given the chance, it's worth keeping an eye on how he's used out of that Angels pen the rest of the way.