The Rangers are signing right-hander Craig Kimbrel to a minor league deal, reports Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. The righty elected free agency yesterday after Atlanta passed him through waivers unclaimed.
Kimbrel, 37, signed a minor league deal with Atlanta in the middle of March. He reported to Triple-A Gwinnett and logged 18 innings with an earned run average of 2.00. His 12.9% walk rate was a bit high but he also struck out 32.9% of batters faced. Atlanta called him up a few days ago but designated him for assignment after just one appearance. He tossed one scoreless inning against the Giants, allowing one hit and surrendering one walk while striking out one opponent.
As a veteran with years of big league experience, Kimbrel has the right to reject an outright assignment and elect free agency. He did exactly that and has quickly secured this minor league deal with the Rangers.
Kimbrel’s track record is well known. He has been one of the most dominant relievers in the sport at times and is currently fifth on the all-time saves list. The bigger question is whether he can still be an effective big leaguer, as his recent track record is shaky. He had an ERA north of 5.00 in both 2019 and 2020. He got that down to more reasonable levels for the 2021-23 seasons but struggled again last year. He had a 2.80 ERA in the first half with the Orioles but was lit up for a 10.59 ERA in the second half, getting released before the season ended.
This year, any club could have given him a big league shot. It was reported that his minor league deal with Atlanta had a “rolling opt-out” that essentially allowed any club to offer him a major league role at any time. If any had done so, Atlanta would have needed to decide whether to call him up themselves. As far as we know, no club took advantage of that contract provision. Atlanta did call him up but for literally one day.
That has left him to settle for another minor league deal. He will presumably report to Triple-A Round Rock shortly and will get some work for that club as he tries to get another chance in the majors.
For the Rangers, they have been looking for cheap bullpen solutions for a long time. In the offseason, they clearly wanted to upgrade the group but also wanted to avoid the competitive balance tax. They signed Chris Martin, Hoby Milner, Luke Jackson, Jacob Webb, Shawn Armstrong and Luis Curvelo to major league deals, none of them worth more than $5.5MM. They also acquired Robert Garcia, who has not yet qualified for arbitration, in the deal that sent Nathaniel Lowe to the Nationals.
They are currently running a four-man rotation with Nathan Eovaldi on the injured list and Kumar Rocker recently optioned to the minors. They can have Tyler Mahle, Jack Leiter, Patrick Corbin and Jacob deGrom start the next four games but might need to do something creative by Saturday. Perhaps they will do a bullpen game or call up a minor leaguer for a spot start. Perhaps a fresh arm will be needed in the next week and Kimbrel could be that guy.
Photo courtesy of Robert Edwards, Imagn Images
Rangers should just spend the money and bring back Houdini. I wish the Yankees or someone else would. I know he still has something left
He seems to have priced himself out of the market. This might be a situation where representing himself hurt his chances as an agent might have been giving him a more honest view of the market.
Also always possible he’s decided to pitch half a season and is waiting to pick the team that will give him the best chance for October baseball.
Yeah why not it’s not like we blow games without scoring runs.
Finally
The bill for that WS win and all those crazy FA signings(and trades) came much sooner than expected.
Flags fly forever!
Maybe he has one last good run in him. That would be cool.
When are teams gonna learn that this guy is finished? How many hours before he’s dfa’d yet again?
Was good 2 years ago, good numbers in minors this year, has had a great career
Why not take a flyer on him if you are a team like the rangers? Relievers turn it around all the time
Rangers and Braves seem to be on the same brain wave length the last few seasons…They’re both like the dog finally catching the car they were chasing after their WS championships and now don’t know what to do.
Come to seattle so you can see how never winning one feels or making it to world series (at least COL made it).
Data that really is sad considering some of the players Seattle had for some time.
As a long time ranger fan, i know very well how that feels
I still have a hard time believing rangers won it all
When they made it and lost two years in a row to St L and S F .. that was hard to believe as well
Why do these teams keep signing crappy pitchers?
cause they are afraid of Urias and Bauer baggage
Never fails that we see a few folks championing that crap when pitching is the topic.
They are not coming back to MLB – their baggage is not worth it for any team. And Bauer especially is not nearly as good as his devoted posse believes anyway.
Stuck in the first four of stages of death except for acceptance.
Trevor Bauers last outing was this past Friday night for the Yokohama Dena Baystars. He threw a complete game giving up only 1 run on 7 hits. Hie ERA for the year is 2.59 in 107.2 innings. How is that considered bad. It’s never been his stuff that was the problem. It was always his attitude!!!
His adherents make him out to be an ace, and other than the shortened season in 2020 and one more season, the dude was a fairly average mid-rotation arm. He hyped himself as the second coming of Justin Verlander but he was not that guy. His FIP is rather pedestrian for his career.
Hence, given the fact that he is basically a nightmare otherwise, teams have absolutely no reason to give him another chance. And taking even a solid major league arm and then playing in the equivalent of AAA to AAAA type leagues, one would expect some level of success but that does not mean that he will then translate back at this point to being any better than he was before and with age he would already be on the downside. He won’t be back, nor will Julio Urias.
Yeah, Rangers’ problem is an underperforming offense. Besides, Kimbrel wouldn’t even make that staff any better. But I guess you can never have enough pitching….
He will be the Rangers Closer that is me being serious.🧐
A 12.9% BB% is a “bit high”? lol
Is a closer gonna help them score 3 runs a game?
Stick a fork in him. He’s done. Imagine thinking you still got it but everyone else knows you don’t. Read the room. You were good bro, hang it up and preserve the last thread of dignity you might have.