Jiménez inducing a lot of contact ... and getting big results

This story was excerpted from Mark Bowman’s Braves Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

ATLANTA -- When thinking about the best Winter Meetings acquisitions in Braves’ history, Greg Maddux, Dansby Swanson and Joe Jiménez come to mind.

Jiménez? Really? Was he even acquired during the Winter Meetings?

Well, it depends on your interpretation. The Rule 5 Draft has always been the unofficial end of the annual Meetings. Once that event ends, journalists usually complete their final story and then head to the airport, unless you are on the West Coast and need to waste time ahead of your red-eye flight.

My initial 2022 Winter Meetings wrap essentially said the past three days had made it even more clear the Braves weren’t going to re-sign Swanson. There might have also been some mention of Fred McGriff being elected to the Hall of Fame.

What had to be later added was that the Braves had acquired Jiménez from the Tigers for Jake Higginbotham and Justyn-Henry Malloy. This trade was completed while I was en route to the San Diego airport. I had actually just sat down to eat at an Italian restaurant.

I can’t give you a restaurant review, because I chose to leave to write the story elsewhere. But I can tell you this is a trade many other teams wish they had made.

Higginbotham is a 28-year-old reliever at the Double-A level. Malloy has power potential and could reach the Majors at some point this year. As for Jiménez, he’ll be an All-Star reliever if he extends the early-season success he has had while making his slider his primary pitch.

Jiménez has recorded 13 strikeouts and issued just two walks over 13 innings. If you have watched the tough luck he has encountered over the past week, you understand why allowing just nine hits and three runs thus far should still seem impressive.

The Guardians tagged Jiménez for three singles and two runs last Saturday. The exit velocities on those three singles were 31.1, 27.8 and 25.4 mph. The only other two hits he allowed this past week were a pair of infield singles, neither of which had an exit velo above 88.3 mph.

Jiménez has a 2.08 ERA. Based on quality of contact produced by opposing hitters, he has a 1.16 expected ERA. That ranks fourth among all qualified relievers, trailing only Mason Miller, Ryan Helsley and Adam Ottavino.

If you go to Jiménez’s Baseball Savant page, you will see as much red as you would on a fall Saturday afternoon in Athens, Ga. That’s a good thing. The red shows he ranks among the league leaders. In fact, he ranks in the 97th percentile or higher in expected BA, expected ERA, average exit velocity and hard-hit percentage.

Jiménez struck out 33.3 percent of the hitters he faced for the Tigers in 2022. He had a 34.5 percent strikeout rate over his final 30 appearances last year. It was during this stretch that he started to show he had fully recovered from the procedure that repaired a lumbar spine strain during the offseason.

But Jiménez has been even better while striking out just 26 percent of the batters he has faced this year. The 29-year-old reliever used his four-seam fastball 62.2 percent of the time last year and 63.7 percent of the time in 2022. The slider was used closer to 30 percent of the time in both seasons.

Jiménez’s slider has accounted for 51.4 percent of his usage this year. The four-seamer accounts for 44.1 percent of his pitches. He’s still getting great results from both pitches.

The average exit velo of the 11 Jiménez sliders put in play this year has been 70.7 mph. That’s the lowest average among all pitchers who have had at least 10 sliders put in play. Chris Sale still has one of the game’s best sliders and his sample size is much larger (47). But it’s worth noting the average exit velo against Sale’s slider has been 79 mph, which is the best mark among all pitchers with at least 25 sliders put in play thus far.