Why Braves Cut Former Red Sox Closer Craig Kimbrel After Just One Appearance
It ain’t over ’til it’s over.
Former Boston Red Sox closer Craig Kimbrel signed a minor-league contract Tuesday with the Texas Rangers.
The right-hander hit the open market after being designated for assignment Saturday by the Atlanta Braves.
That came one day after Kimbrel made his 2025 regular season debut, throwing one shutout inning in a 5-4 loss to the San Francisco Giants. His line that night? One inning, one hit, one strikeout, one walk and no runs allowed. So why did he lose his job?
Kimbrel’s fastball averaged just 91.6 mph against the Giants, according to The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and Will Sammon. They also reported Kimbrel averaged 93.2 mph in Triple-A before the Braves called him up. (He averaged 97.1 mph in 2018 with the Red Sox.)
Former Braves teammate Brian McCann didn’t sound convinced about the drop in velocity.
“I’m not going to speak for Craig, but he was also on a cross-county flight that morning. Maybe he didn’t have his legs under him, I’m not sure,” McCann said, per Rosenthal and Sammon. “At the end of the day, he put up a zero. You can’t ask for much more than a zero when you take the mound.”
Kimbrel, who made his MLB debut in 2010 with the Braves, is fifth all-time with 440 saves. As a result, McCann thinks Atlanta needed to have a little patience with the reliever.
“That really frustrated me and a lot of the guys in our locker room were very frustrated with it,” McCann said, per Rosenthal and Sammon. “It was strange to call him up for a day and DFA him. He’s not just a run-of-the-mill reliever who became a journeyman after two or three years in the big leagues. He’s a future Hall of Famer.”
Part of that potential Hall-of-Fame resume is Kimbrel’s role as closer for the Red Sox in 2018, helping the club win its fourth World Series title of the 21st century. However some of those postseason appearances were nail-biters. In nine trips to the mound during the playoffs, Kimbrel gave up seven earned runs in 10 2/3 innings of work, good for an unsightly 5.90 ERA.