{"id":245306,"date":"2026-05-26T17:55:30","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T17:55:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/26\/hall-of-fame-closer-joins-best-team-in-american-league\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T17:55:30","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T17:55:30","slug":"hall-of-fame-closer-joins-best-team-in-american-league","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/26\/hall-of-fame-closer-joins-best-team-in-american-league\/","title":{"rendered":"Hall of Fame closer joins best team in American League"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>It is no secret that the glory days of future <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yardbarker.com\/mlb\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">MLB<\/a> Hall of Famer <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yardbarker.com\/mlb\/players\/craig_kimbrel\/125392\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Craig Kimbrel\u00a0<\/a>are behind him. Kimbrel still, though, is hanging around in the major leagues and just struck a deal with one of baseball&#8217;s best teams this season.<\/p>\n<h2>Craig Kimbrel is headed to Tampa Bay<\/h2>\n<p>Just days after being <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yardbarker.com\/mlb\/articles\/mets_designate_craig_kimbrel_for_assignment_recall_jonah_tong\/s1_13237_43872347\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">designated<\/a> for assignment by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yardbarker.com\/mlb\/teams\/new_york_mets\/19\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">New York Mets<\/a>, Kimbrel has landed with his 11th different team of his professional career.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As it was first reported by insider Ken Rosenthal, Kimbrel and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yardbarker.com\/mlb\/teams\/tampa_bay_rays\/27\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Tampa Bay Rays<\/a> have agreed on a major league deal. Kimbrel has appeared in 14 games this season, posting a 6.00 ERA and -0.3 WAR in those appearances.<\/p>\n<p>He will now join a Tampa Bay team that has the best record in the American League but has the third-fewest <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/leagues\/team_compare.cgi\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Wins Above Average<\/a> from its bullpen staff.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script>\n    !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)\n    {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?\n    n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};\n    if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';\n    n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;\n    t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];\n    s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script',\n    'https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js');\n    fbq('init', '1324276914788316');\n    fbq('track', 'PageView');\n  <\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.yardbarker.com\/mlb\/articles\/hall_of_fame_closer_joins_best_team_in_american_league\/s1_13132_43885439\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is no secret that the glory days of future MLB Hall of Famer Craig Kimbrel\u00a0are behind him. Kimbrel still, though, is hanging around in the major leagues and just struck a deal with one of baseball&#8217;s best teams this season. Craig Kimbrel is headed to Tampa Bay Just days after being designated for assignment [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":245307,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6806],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-245306","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-gossip"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}