So, Big Red’s back in town for the Atlanta Braves? Uh, am I the only one who called him Big Red? Naturally, I visited his Baseball-Reference page for the sole purpose of figuring out which wacky nickname he has listed. Big Red’s nowhere to be found but “Dirty Craig” is right there for the whole world to see.
Anyways, I know y’all didn’t come here to hear me talk about nicknames for the guy — you came to figure out how he’s going to do for the Atlanta Braves going forward. On Tuesday evening, the Braves made a bit of a shocking deal by bringing Craig Kimbrel back to the franchise on a Minor League deal with the intention of getting him ready with the Gwinnett Stripers before eventually adding him to the big league bullpen.
At this stage in Craig Kimbrel’s career, his days of being a dominant closer appear to be behind him. He’s pitched for five teams over the past five seasons, which is an indicator that he’s transitioned into the role of journeyman reliever — a pitcher that a contending team will bring in for a season to see how things work out but a long-term relationship is out of the question. For most relievers, this is their ultimate destiny and Kimbrel is no different here as I’d imagine that this is likely going to end up being another one-and-done season, nostalgia notwithstanding.
With that being said, I’m not saying all of this to say that Kimbrel’s completely out of gas here. Now granted, he’s definitely limping a bit as he makes his return to the Braves. His most recent stop in Baltimore didn’t go particularly well as he ended up having one of his worst seasons in terms of run prevention, as he finished with his highest numbers in ERA, ERA-, FIP and FIP- (not including his truncated 2019 season that saw him deal with a bunch of knee issues). At a glance, it’d be easy to think that 2024 could’ve ended up being his swan song due to how ineffective he was during the final part of his stint with the Orioles.
However, there’s still something here as evidenced by the fact that Alex Anthopoulos went out and signed him a day after sending Angel Perdomo to the Angels. I’d imagine that the most alluring facet that Craig Kimbrel brings to the table at this point is the fact that he’s still very good at missing bats. He finished 2024 in the 85th percentile when it comes to whiff percentage and he was in the 93rd percentile when it came to strikeout percentage as well. Additionally, his expected Batting Average against him was in the 79th percentile.
This was after he finished 2023 in the 95th percentile in xBA, the 98th percentile in strikeout percentage and 91st percentile in whiff percentage with the Phillies. So that’s two seasons in a row where he’s at least shown that he can still put the ball past the batter on a regular basis. That’s still a very valuable skill to have and it makes sense that any contending team would take a chance on Kimbrel as long as he’s able to strike out batters at that level.
With that being said, it’s hard to ignore the fact that his walk rate has always been pretty high — even dating back to his final season in Atlanta, he had a 10.7 percent walk rate during that season. He balanced it out with a 38 percent strikeout rate during 2024 so it was all gravy. In 2024, his strikeout rate was still high at 31.5 percent but he was hurt by the fact that his walk rate was at 13.4 percent, which is one of the highest numbers in any full season that he’s pitched.
Additionally, while he’s still good at missing bats, it was bad news when hitters actually did put the bat to the ball against him. Again, this is something that’s followed Craig Kimbrel for most of his career but last season was the first time where it was pretty clear that Kimbrel had turned into a “glass cannon” of sorts where he’s extremely effective as long as he doesn’t receive even the slightest bit of damage. Once that happened, he found himself in a bunch of trouble and that was evidenced by how hard he hit the wall in Baltimore once he started to struggle.
The latter stretch run of the regular season in particular wasn’t kind to Kimbrel at all, as he pitched 12.1 innings over 13 appearances during the final two months of the season and ended up with 16 hits allowed, 10 walks allowed 16 runs allowed and 3 homers given up. As a result, he finished with a scarcely-believable ERA of 11.68 and FIP of 6.73 over that span, which translated into an ERA- of 297 and a FIP- of 168. Phew!
With that being said, before he hit the wall in August, Kimbrel was totally fine for the O’s! He tossed 40 innings from April 1 through July 31 of last season and ended up with something that looked more like the Craig Kimbrel that the baseball world has gotten used to seeing over the past couple of seasons. An ERA of 3.38, a FIP of 3.39 (resulting in a solid ERA- of 86 and FIP- of 84) with 24 hits allowed, 21 walks allowed (some things don’t change), 19 runs allowed and four homers given up. He even racked up 23 saves during that span! Here he is striking out Mike Trout to finish off a game (with the bases loaded because of course he had the bases loaded):
During the early portion of 2024, Kimbrel was effective and he was fine with the Phillies in 2023 as well. It’s clear that the Braves are betting on that version of Kimbrel showing up, rather than the one that exploded into a bunch of tiny little shiny pieces once the 2024 season started coming to a close. He’ll also hopefully have the benefit of not having a high-leverage role in this Atlanta Braves bullpen. He doesn’t have to worry about being the closer since Raisel Iglesias has that on lock. He’s probably not going to be the first choice for high-leverage options outside of that as well, as that will likely be the territory of Pierce Johnson and Dylan Lee here in 2025. Aaron Bummer should hopefully receive a bit more trust after he still found a way to be effective despite being cosmically unlucky in 2024.
Even with the Braves losing Joe Jiménez for most of (if not all of) the 2025 season and allowing for the usual reliever volatility that exists from season-to-season, this bullpen still has the potential to be just fine and they aren’t in need of a savior at the moment. As such, Craig Kimbrel can simply slot in and try to be an effective reliever without having the expectations of needing to be The Man Around Here. He already did that during a handful of fantastic seasons to begin his career here in Atlanta and now he’s returning just to make sure that the ship stays afloat whenever he’s called upon.
I’d imagine that with the lowered expectations, a franchise that is pretty good about nurturing relievers and the familiarity factor (despite the fact that it’s been 10 seasons and a new ballpark since he last pitched for the Braves), Kimbrel has the chance to continue being an effective reliever in 2025. The risks are certainly very clear but if he’s utilized properly, Kimbrel should serve as a very solid addition to this bullpen and the Braves might end up being happy with this reunion once they look back on things in the Fall. Let’s see what happens!
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