Braves add some bullpen depth after signing walk-prone reliever to minor league deal

With the departures of AJ Minter, Jesse Chavez, and others as well as Joe Jimenez’s injury, the Atlanta Braves’ bullpen is going to look very different heading into 2025. Raisel Iglesias will still be closing games out, but the Braves are going to have to lean heavily on Aaron Bummer and Pierce Johnson along with some new faces to lock down the later innings this coming season.

In an ideal world, the Braves would add another proven bullpen arm for safety this offseason. They attempted to do so with Jeff Hoffman, but his physical raised some concerns that torpedoed that deal and he ended up with Toronto. There is still time and plenty of interesting relievers left on the market, but the clock is ticking.

So far, the Braves have instead opted for making a number of minor signings in the hopes of creating a large competition in spring training for the final bullpen spots. That continued with the word that the Braves signed Dany Jimenez to a minor league deal.

Braves, Dany Jimenez Agree To Minor League Deal https://t.co/Y8OnFUjzvO pic.twitter.com/VB9JSMneJF

— MLB Trade Rumors (@mlbtraderumors) February 4, 2025

Braves make curious move to sign reliever Dany Jimenez to a minor league deal

Atlanta signing Jimenez was considered such a small move at the time that it had to be mined from the transaction log. On the surface, he doesn’t really fit the profile of a guy the Braves would normally like as he doesn’t have big-time power stuff and struggled mightily with walks his last two seasons with the Athletics. He struggled so much that the A’s opted to just non-tender him at the start of the offseason.

However, giving Jimenez a minor league deal minimizes a lot of the risks in signing him. More importantly, Jimenez does have a few things going for him. Despite only having middling swing-and-miss stuff, he is really good at limiting hard contact and his slider is basically impossible to hit. If the Braves can make an adjustment with Jimenez to get his fastball to play up basically at all, he could be a very useful middle reliever especially against righties.

If it doesn’t work out, so be it. Jimenez will have to demonstrate that he can find the strike zone during spring training to be in the conversation for a big league roster spot. If he can’t, Atlanta can just move on to another relief option.