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• Craig kimbrel pitching repertoire full#

Likely one of the most attractive trade targets for contending teams this summer? The stabilizing force that he is for the Cubs and 2. Perhaps an elite type like Kimbrel is more adept at recovering from such a spiral, but what exactly is different that has allowed Kimbrel to return from the precipice of irrelevance to being 1. It all adds up to one thought: he’s back!īut what’s changed here? In a broad sense, once a reliever goes, he’s gone forever. His Chase%, while not quite as strong, still sits in the 79th.

He’s also in the 97th in average exit velocity against and the 92nd in Barrel%. As of this writing, Kimbrel’s in the 97th in K% and the 95th in both Whiff% and 圎RA. Percentile rankings, futile as they may be this early in the season, seem to support that. Kimbrel’s 0.5 fWAR is the second-highest figure among relievers to this point. The Hard% has plummeted to 14.3 percent, and he hasn’t had a single barrel’s worth of contact against him.

Craig kimbrel pitching repertoire full#

Hitters are swinging at a rate (45.5) more akin to his career norms (46.0), including a 32.6 percent chase rate (up a full eight percent from 2020). His strikeout rate sits at 14.00 per nine and his CSW% is back up to 36.6, his highest mark since 2017. Thus far in the young season, he has yet to surrender an earned run through eight appearances. So after he turned in a 12.15 ERA during the spring, the assumption was that Kimbrel was cooked.Īnd yet, here we are in 2021 talking about just how good Craig Kimbrel has been. When hitters did swing, which wasn’t terribly often, they often connected to disastrous results. To put it simply, while Kimbrel still had decent strikeout numbers, he still gave up far too much hard contact, far too much flyball contact, and was unable to fool hitters in remotely the same fashion. His fastball velocity also dipped a touch in those two years (96.6), and, in 2020, opposing hitters swung just 37.7 percent of the time, easily the lowest mark of his career. Barrel% sat at 17.3 and 18.5 percent, respectively, both of which are also wildly higher than any figure he had previously posted there. Those are the two highest marks of his career, with the latter coming in at a pretty wide margin even from 2019. Obviously the walk rate and the HR/FB ratios stand out, but he also surrendered hard contact at a rate of 46.2 percent in 2019 and 51.9 percent in 2020. Except he followed it up in 2020 with walk rate over seven per nine and a 16.7 percent HR/FB that would have been a career high had the previous year not happened.Įven with consecutive years that could classify as “weird” and perhaps offer at least some justification for Kimbrel having the struggles that he did, the trends there didn’t paint a pretty picture for a reliever that the Cubs invested a lot in to anchor the backend of their bullpen. However, late start to the year, you probably give the guy a pass. His 36 percent FB/HR ratio was almost three times higher than any rate at any point in his career. Most concerning was his penchant for giving up the long ball. His strikeout rate was just a touch over 13 per nine, which almost matched his ‘18 rate, while he walked hitters at a clip of 5.23/9. In 2019, the now-32-year-old turned in a 6.53 ERA and a FIP of 8.00. Despite his history, this is still a relatively surprising development given his age (relative to the fact that he’s a high gas reliever) and his output in the last two years. Recently, he has very much returned to the form that he displayed in his time with Atlanta and Boston (did anybody else entirely forget he pitched in San Diego for a year? Me neither, I was just asking).īut for a group of arms that has been so volatile to start the year, Kimbrel has represented a source of stability. The formerly elite closer signed a three-year pact with the Cubs in 2019 only to struggle mightily in the subsequent months. Or should we say, re-enter Craig Kimbrel. With Kyle Hendricks stumbling out of the gate, a group of middling arms behind him in the rotation, and a bullpen composed almost exclusively of the throw-it-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach, it isn’t difficult to understand why it’s been a lot of misses up on the bump for the Cubs.Įnter Craig Kimbrel. If you were to take a quick peak at the pitching staff of the Chicago Cubs, it likely wouldn’t register that anybody in that group could be tagged with the all-important “elite” label.