With a Félix Bautista-sized hole in the bullpen for 2024, the importance for the Orioles to find someone this offseason who can bolster either their eighth- or ninth-inning options has been plain. In the early hours of Wednesday morning, MLB Network’s Joel Sherman offered one possible direction that the O’s could go, reporting on Twitter that the O’s “have been seriously engaged” in trying to bring free agent Craig Kimbrel to sign with Baltimore.
Kimbrel, now a veteran of 14 MLB seasons, will turn 36 in the first half of next season. He will at that point be a decade removed from his early-career run of absolute dominance with Atlanta, and more than a half-decade beyond a successful three-year stretch with the Red Sox.