{"id":165161,"date":"2025-08-22T00:47:17","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T00:47:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/165161\/"},"modified":"2025-08-22T00:47:17","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T00:47:17","slug":"astros-to-sign-craig-kimbrel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/165161\/","title":{"rendered":"Astros To Sign Craig Kimbrel"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Astros are in agreement with\u00a0Craig Kimbrel<\/a><\/strong> on a major league contract, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN<\/a>. The SportsMeter client was just granted his release from a minor league deal with Texas, per Evan Grant of The Dallas Morning News<\/a>. Houston will need to create space on both the active and 40-man rosters.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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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\u2019s 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 \u201924. Kimbrel remained effective with the Orioles in the first half of the \u201924 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.<\/p>\n

While the Triple-A results are solid, Kimbrel\u2019s raw stuff hasn\u2019t 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\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n

Only the Rockies, Blue Jays and Nationals have a higher bullpen ERA than Houston does over the past month. The Astros lost\u00a0Josh Hader<\/a><\/strong> for at least the remainder of the regular season to a capsule strain in his shoulder.\u00a0Bryan Abreu<\/a><\/strong> is an elite back-end arm in his own right, and they have a strong left-handed trio of\u00a0Steven Okert<\/a><\/strong>,\u00a0Bryan King<\/a><\/strong> and\u00a0Bennett Sousa<\/a><\/strong>. Abreu is essentially their only reliable righty reliever. Kimbrel\u2019s command makes him a volatile bullpen piece as well, but he has more swing-and-miss upside than\u00a0Enyel De Los Santos<\/a><\/strong> or\u00a0Shawn Dubin<\/a><\/strong> provide in the middle innings.<\/p>\n

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\u2019ll have a little over five weeks of regular season action to convince the front office and coaching staff he\u2019s worth carrying in October. Houston leads the Mariners by 1.5 games in the AL West. They\u2019re 3.5 games clear of the Royals, the top team that is not currently in playoff position.<\/p>\n

Image courtesy of Robert Edwards, Imagn Images.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Astros are in agreement with\u00a0Craig Kimbrel on a major league contract, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN. The…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":165162,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[95065,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-165161","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-craig-kimbrel","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115069664913588611","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}