Right-handed reliever Joe Jiménez stood in front of his locker in the Detroit Tigers‘ clubhouse in September and reflected on his baseball career, from playing alongside Carlos Correa as a youth in Puerto Rico to navigating his successes and failures as a professional.
“More downs than ups,” Jiménez said.
This part of Jiménez’s story begins in the 2021 season, when he didn’t make the Opening Day roster out of spring training. Since then, he revived his career, re-established himself as a high-leverage reliever and became a prized trade chip for Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris.
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“The only team that gave me the opportunity to sign was Detroit,” Jiménez said Sept. 17. “Twenty-nine more teams had the opportunity to sign me (as an undrafted free agent). Detroit took the chance. That was really special for me. I’m really grateful for this organization, from start to now, and obviously what we have in the future.”
The Tigers recently traded Jiménez (with cash considerations) to the Atlanta Braves in exchange for outfielder/third baseman Justyn-Henry Malloy and left-handed reliever Jake Higginbotham. Since Jiménez becomes a free agent after the 2023 season, the Tigers capitalized on the opportunity to move him at his highest value.
The Braves plan to use Jiménez as a late-inning reliever.
“First of all, Joe is a very difficult person to trade,” Harris said Dec. 7 at the winter meetings. “He’s really popular in the clubhouse. He had an exceptional year for us last year. I think Atlanta is getting a great person. You guys know that. You know him. In the end, it was an opportunity to add a young hitter that we’re really excited about and a left-handed reliever that we think can really help us.”
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Jiménez, signed by Tigers scout James Orr out of Puerto Rico in June 2013, finished his Tigers career (or at least his first stint) with a 5.24 ERA, 9.3% walk rate and 28.6% strikeout rate in 266 innings and 297 games across parts of six seasons. He grew up as the closer of the future, reached the All-Star Game in 2018, struggled in the 2020-21 seasons and bounced back in 2022.
In 2022, Jiménez had the best season of his career.
He posted a 3.49 ERA with 13 walks (5.6% walk rate) and 77 strikeouts (33.3% strikeout rate) over 56⅔ innings in 62 games. His strikeout rate ranked 15th among 152 qualified relievers in baseball and his 1.4 fWAR ranked first among six qualified relievers from the Tigers.
“To be honest, it was really hard, really hard,” said Jiménez, who turns 28 in January. “In your job, you don’t want to fail. You want to succeed as much as you can to keep going, to keep climbing the ladder. It was really hard for me.”
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The 2021 season was the toughest of Jiménez career, but he blames himself for his shortcomings. Jiménez, coming off the COVID-shortened 2020 season, didn’t prepare his body the way he was supposed to ahead of spring training.
Manager A.J. Hinch, who emphasizes preparation, left him off the 2021 Opening Day roster and sent him to Triple-A Toledo. The Tigers promoted Jiménez to the major leagues in mid-April, but he gave up five runs (with seven walks) across two outings and returned to the Mud Hens.
“I didn’t understand it at the time, but I wasn’t ready to start the season,” Jiménez said, more than a year later. “Even when they called me up, I wasn’t ready. At one point, I wasn’t going to be here this year (in 2022), to be honest.”
He remembers calling his agent, Mark Pieper of ISE Baseball, following the rocky season. A 5.96 ERA across 45⅓ innings and a 16.7% walk rate, despite encouraging underlying metrics, caused him to doubt his future as he entered his second year of arbitration eligibility. He thought the Tigers would decline to tender him a contract, which would have forced him into free agency.
The Tigers, after some internal debate, decided to bring him back for the 2022 season.
“I thought I was going to be a free agent and the lockout was going to start,” Jiménez said. “Then, you never know what’s going to happen. Maybe you get a job, maybe you don’t. I didn’t do well for two years. The good part is that I was young. I have a lot of baseball in me.”
That’s when everything changed.
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Jiménez spent almost the entire offseason in Davenport, Florida, only making a brief trip to Puerto Rico to pitch six games of winter ball and celebrate Christmas with his family. He invited his trainer to live at his home in Florida. They worked out together and cooked together as Jiménez reconstructed his offseason routine. He didn’t waver from his strict workout and nutrition plans.
From an on-field standpoint, Jiménez cleaned up his mechanics by ditching his glove tap. He tossed 6⅔ scoreless innings with five saves, zero walks and 10 strikeouts for Gigantes de Carolina in the Puerto Rican Winter League.
“If something hurt, I got someone to work on me,” Jiménez said. “I did everything that I could to be successful this year. That’s what I’m going to do this offseason, too. I’m not going to back down now. … Like I said before, you want to climb that ladder. I’m going to do everything that I did last year and more.”
When the Tigers traded Jiménez, the organization lost a valuable person behind the scenes, as well as a high-leverage reliever on the field. Learning English at a bilingual school as a teenager helped him foster relationships with teammates, even without the most outgoing personality. He also controlled the aux cord, pumping music throughout the clubhouse, as the Tigers’ DJ. He is passionate about his roots in Puerto Rico and advocates for MLB to retire Roberto Clemente’s No. 21 jersey across the league. He appreciates Tigers fans for supporting him through more downs than ups.
Now, he is a staple in the Braves’ bullpen.
“This is Plan A. I don’t have Plan B,” Jiménez said of his revival with the Tigers last season. “To be honest, man, this is it. That’s why I don’t take it for granted. You never know what’s going to happen tomorrow.”
Contact Evan Petzold at epetzold@freepress.com or follow him on Twitter @EvanPetzold.