The Astros are in agreement with Craig Kimbrel on a major league contract, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN. The SportsMeter client was just granted his release from a minor league deal with Texas, per Evan Grant of The Dallas Morning News. Houston will need to create space on both the active and 40-man rosters.
Kimbrel spent a little more than two months in Triple-A with Texas. He signed in June one day after electing free agency from the Braves. That followed a bizarre sequence in which Kimbrel’s initial team called him up for one day. The nine-time All-Star labored through a scoreless inning in his lone appearance. That remains his only MLB outing this season. Kimbrel has otherwise divided the year between the upper minors affiliates of Atlanta and Texas.
Between the two organizations, Kimbrel carries a flat 3.00 earned run average in 39 minor league innings. He has recorded an excellent 31.5% strikeout percentage but has walked nearly 13% of batters faced. It’s a similar profile as Kimbrel has shown in the big leagues in recent seasons. He had a strikeout rate in the 31-34% range while issuing free passes between 10-13% of the time in both 2023 and ’24. Kimbrel remained effective with the Orioles in the first half of the ’24 season, but he melted down after the All-Star Break (20 earned runs in 17 innings) and has barely gotten an MLB look since then.
While the Triple-A results are solid, Kimbrel’s raw stuff hasn’t been as sharp this year. His fastball has been in the 92-93 MPH range in Triple-A; he averaged less than 92 on the heater in his only big league outing. He’d sat closer to 94 last year and was up to 96 as recently as 2023. He missed enough bats against minor league hitters to intrigue the Astros, whose bullpen has struggled of late.
Only the Rockies, Blue Jays and Nationals have a higher bullpen ERA than Houston does over the past month. The Astros lost Josh Hader for at least the remainder of the regular season to a capsule strain in his shoulder. Bryan Abreu is an elite back-end arm in his own right, and they have a strong left-handed trio of Steven Okert, Bryan King and Bennett Sousa. Abreu is essentially their only reliable righty reliever. Kimbrel’s command makes him a volatile bullpen piece as well, but he has more swing-and-miss upside than Enyel De Los Santos or Shawn Dubin provide in the middle innings.
The signing is expected to become official on Friday. Getting the deal done before September 1 means Kimbrel will be eligible for postseason play if the Astros qualify. He’ll have a little over five weeks of regular season action to convince the front office and coaching staff he’s worth carrying in October. Houston leads the Mariners by 1.5 games in the AL West. They’re 3.5 games clear of the Royals, the top team that is not currently in playoff position.
Image courtesy of Robert Edwards, Imagn Images.
He’s COOKED…
bet you said the same thing about kikuchi last year. worry about the roid monsters in your pen bud
🤦♂️
Good luck Dirty Craig
He went from the clean-cut face of a cherub to the face of a twice-divorced alcoholic cherub that put glue on his face and rolled around a barber shop.
But the barber only trims short and curlies
What could go wrong?
Hahahaha
condolences…
An Astros move that’s out of this world
stupid should sign pressly back .. but he might not want to go back after the BS treatment he got from them
His mother wants him back on the Astros.
It’s sad the braves didnt give him much of a second chance
Its sad because he left them little choice..his stuff just isn’t what it needs to be to get mlb hitters out consistently
Hopefully the guy can end his career better than he was for my o’s last year.
Mariners should have done this, our bullpen is atrocious
The Astros will be his ninth MLB team, and seventh since 2021. The latter number includes his brief return to the Braves.
And he will still likely go into the HOF. Great relievers can be well traveled. Goose Gossage also played on 9 teams over the years, most of them near the end. Heck, if Billy Wagner made it, might as well put in just about anyone.
Agreed aside from the random shot at Wagner. What relievers should have gotten in instead of him?
The Astros better hope they don’t need Kimbrel during high leverage situations. It’s a big reason the Phillies lost the 2023 NLCS.
Mariners and Astros trying hard as they can to both lose the division.