The Braves agreed to minor league deals with reliever Dany Jiménez and catcher Chandler Seagle last month (h/t to Baseball America’s Matt Eddy). Mike Rodriguez first reported the Jiménez deal.
Jiménez, 31, has pitched in parts of four big league seasons. The past three have come with the A’s, with whom he made at least 25 appearances in each year. Jiménez managed decent results between 2022-23 despite scattershot command. He combined for a 3.43 ERA over 57 2/3 frames during that two-year stretch. He punched out a league average 23% of opponents but walked more than 13% of batters faced.
The walks caught up to him last season. Jiménez struggled to a 4.91 ERA in 25 2/3 innings. His strikeout rate ticked down (21.4%) while the walks climbed to a massive 16.2% rate. His fastball speed has trended in the wrong direction. Jiménez averaged around 94 MPH on the heater in 2022. That dropped slightly to 93.3 MPH the next year and sat at a career-low 92.5 MPH last season. He leans more heavily on his low-80s slider, a pitch that generated big swinging strike numbers in 2022 but hasn’t been as effective over the last two years.
At the end of the season, the A’s opted not to tender Jiménez an arbitration contract projected at $1MM. He’ll need to earn his way back onto the 40-man roster with a strong showing in camp and/or at Triple-A Gwinnett. Jiménez still has a couple option seasons, so if he does crack the 40-man, the Braves can move him between Atlanta and Gwinnett without putting him on waivers.
Seagle, 29, is an organizational depth catcher. He spent seven seasons in the Padres’ system. Seagle is a career .201/.272/.286 hitter in the minors. The Padres called him up for the final game of the 2023 season and got him an at-bat. While they outrighted him off their 40-man roster early in the offseason, they re-signed him to a minor league contract last year. He appeared in 38 games with their Triple-A team, hitting .180/.219/.280 in 107 plate appearances.
Let’s goooooo…..
I guess….
Yep I agree, a cautiously optimistic let’s goooooo feels about right.
IMO, Braves ownership digs AA. Can’t see them wanting to move on from him.
That said; obvious to me that they’ve got him on a player payroll budget … which he is up against. With 40 +/- mil tied up in to 3 players that MAYBE get back on the field mid season, his hands are tied. Nothing shocking about this move.
Who are the 3 players that “maybe” get back in the field by then?
Jiminez, Acuna, Strider
Yes, I agree, ‘math is hard”. That said; reading, even harder … for me. I was using average annual over the actual for 2025. Oops. Put it on my tab.
Dany Jiménez’s fastball velocity is dropping like my WiFi signal during a Zoom meeting. But hey, maybe the Braves can reboot him.
Soto who? These type ‘between the margins’ moves can really help and if they turn into a nothing burger, so what. At the end of the year we will all know exactly what type budget AA had to work with. So far all anyone can say for sure is AA didn’t like the price point so he did not pull the trigger and the free agents didn’t choose the Braves at the tipping point. That’s it. We will see at the end when the books are made public.
I feel like the goal this year is to get under the threshold. To me, that’s secondary to rebuilding the farm. I’d rather see them spend a little extra than to trade our near-term prospects in order to save money to reset the CBT.