When the Atlanta Braves brought Craig Kimbrel back this week, fans were hit with a wave of nostalgia. During Kimbrel’s five year run with the Braves from 2010-2014 to start his career, he posted an absurd 1.43 ERA, won Rookie of the Year, led the league in saves for four straight seasons, and made four straight All-Star teams.

Well over a decade since he last threw a pitch for Atlanta, times have changed a good bit. Kimbrel has certainly gone on to have a career that should have him in strong consideration for Cooperstown, but he isn’t the unstoppable force he once was. In fact, there are some signs that signing him could end up backfiring in spectacular fashion.

Here is a look at why the Braves’ reunion with Kimbrel may not end the way many fans hope, but also at a couple rays of hope.

Kimbrel’s velocity decline should cause Braves some concern

At 36 years old, it would be understandable to see a drop-off in Kimbrel’s stuff. The 15-year veteran has 809.2 innings on his arm and nearly all of them have been reliant on being a power pitcher with great extension getting the job done.

Unfortunately, that tracks with what we saw last year when Kimbrel was with the Orioles. After consistently averaging 95-96 mph on his fastball the previous few seasons, Kimbrel’s fastball dipped to 93.9 mph in 2024. He still got pretty good results with his fastball last season, but it could become a problem especially if his velo continues to trend downward and especially if he gets off to a slow start given his late signing.

Despite his decline, Craig Kimbrel still misses bats at an elite rate

There are certainly warts to Kimbrel’s game, but the one thing that he has consistently done in his career is strike guys out. From 2010-2023, Kimbrel averaged a strikeout rate of 14.2 Ks per nine innings pitched which is among the highest rates in baseball history. The lowest Kimbrel’s strikeout rate ever dipped to was 10.8 and that was in 2022 when he pitched for the Dodgers (gross).

Kimbrel’s season with the Orioles last season wasn’t ideal with a 5.33 ERA in 57 appearances, but the strikeouts were still there. In 52.1 innings of work, Kimbrel struck out 73 batters despite his struggles in Baltimore. With a whiff rate of 30.9% which is legitimately good, there is still some reason to believe that Kimbrel can still miss bats.

At 36 years old, Kimbrel’s walk rate and batted ball metrics are already heading in the wrong direction

While the strikeouts are still there, there are some other troubling trends. First, Kimbrel has dealt with issues finding the strike zone throughout his career. His stuff was so good that he could often work around the free baserunners, but there were certainly times where it seemed like Kimbrel was playing with fire. With his fastball slowing down a bit and opposing hitters all of a sudden able to hit his knuckle curve last year (.261 against it in 2024 after being previously borderline unhittable), walking 5.3 batters per nine becomes a lot more spooky.

Complicating matters is that when hitters make contact, they have been finding more and more success against Kimbrel lately. He hasn’t really been much of a ground ball pitcher pretty much ever, but diminishing stuff has led his barrel %, average exit velocity, and hard hit % to dwell towards the bottom of the league. Hard hit ground balls can be worked with, but hard hit line drives and fly balls are a problem.

Despite his shortcomings, the Braves need not use Kimbrel in high leverage situations

If the Braves were signing Kimbrel to come into games in the biggest spots, his flaws would be more problematic. As good as he has been and with all of his experience, the hard reality is that Kimbrel is in the twilight of his career and relying on him in that way is just not a recipe for success.

However, the Braves don’t have to do that. Raisel Iglesias is one of the better closers in all of baseball and the arms behind him include Pierce Johnson, Aaron Bummer, and Hector Neris who all are usually pretty trustworthy in important times of the game. Kimbrel can ramp up his usage at his and the team’s leisure and he can come in as a bullpen mentor who won’t be rattled by the moment. Given the terms of his deal and where the Braves’ bullpen currently sits, that is more than enough.

That said, Kimbrel’s chase rate last season is legitimately concerning and could be his undoing

Whatever role Kimbrel finds himself in with the Braves, he is going to have to get outs. So far, he has been able to age pretty well as a pitcher all things considered thanks to having loads of experience at his back and knowing how to pitch even when he doesn’t have his best stuff. However, there have certainly been some cracks forming in that armor in recent years.

For most of his career, Kimbrel has been a guy that has been able to get hitters to chase out of the zone especially with his knuckle curve which has been an out pitch for him. However, in two of the past three seasons including 2024, his chase rate has been abysmal with last season’s 22.3% chase rate being in the bottom 2% in all of baseball. It is safe to say that regardless of what inning(s) Kimbrel is throwing in, the Braves are going to need a bit more than that.

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