Craig Kimbrel Comes Full Circle with One-Year, $10 Million Phillies Deal

Just in case you thought Dave Dombrowski was done providing Phillies fans with early Christmas gifts, like The Old Man instructing Ralphie to find that last gift hidden over in the corner, he had one more surprise present. On the brink of Christmas Eve, he delivered a new arm for the bullpen with a pretty strong track record.

The Phillies signed veteran closer Craig Kimbrel to a one-year deal:

Craig Kimbrel has agreed to a one-year, $10 million deal with the Phillies, per source. @Ken_Rosenthal and @JeffPassan were on it.

— Mark Feinsand (@Feinsand) December 24, 2022

Kimbrel, 34, an 8-time All-Star, and 2011 N.L. Rookie of the Year, won a World Series with Dombrowski as the Red Sox closer in 2018.

Since then, Kimbrel has played for both Chicago teams and the Dodgers last season, with varying degrees of success and failure. He had an injury-plagued 2019 that stretched into the pandemic-shortened 2020, but the combined numbers from those two seasons weren’t great. He bounced back in 2021 and was nearly untouchable in 36 2/3 innings for the Cubs where he had a 0.49 ERA and allowed just 13 hits and 13 walks while striking out 64. He was traded at the deadline to the White Sox, where he wasn’t as good, but still limited hits and kept his strikeout rate high. He just got wild and yielded 5 homers in 23 innings, which caused the ERA to balloon.

But after signing in Los Angeles last season to replace Kenley Jansen as the closer, Kimbrel faltered and lost the job. He finished with a 3.75 ERA and a 1.317 WHIP. He also had the lowest strikeout rate of his career (10.8 per nine innings).

Still, his overall body of work is sensational. In 13 seasons he has a 2.31 ERA, a 0.985 WHIP, and averages 14.4 strikeouts per nine innings. He has 394 saves, which ranks seventh all-time. His career ERA plus is an eye-popping 177.

A fastball/curveball pitcher, the one concern is his fastball has lost a little life in recent seasons.

In that World Series year of 2018 as the Red Sox closer, his fastball averaged 97.1 MPH (His career best was 98.1in 2017). By last season in L.A., his average fastball was down to 95.8 MPH.

That said, he ran into a little bad luck last season. Opponents hit .259 off his fastball, the second highest of his career behind only the injury-shortened 2019.

However, the expected batting average on his 2022 fastball was just .199, which tracks only slightly higher than the rest of his career. It’s that he wasn’t missing as many bats as he did in the past, with his whiff percentage on fastballs down to 23.4 percent, the lowest of his career.

His curveball remained pretty dominant, with a 43.6 whiff percentage in 2022, but even that was a career low.

The Phillies are likely banking on him getting better luck with the fastball and still being able to create a lot of swing and miss with the curve ball to be an effective back end of the bullpen piece.

Whether they will use him as a closer, and deploy Seranthony Dominguez as a versatile fireman to be used in any inning that calls for high leverage, or keep Dominguez in the closer role and count on Kimbrel as a traditional setup man, remains to be seen.

However, fans will now have to embrace his wacky pre-delivery stance on the mound rather than impersonate him and try to throw him off, as they did effectively back in 2014:

Craig Kimbrel comes full circle pic.twitter.com/HWhoTL68Dp

— Crossing Broad (@CrossingBroad) December 24, 2022

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