Braves right-hander Joe Jimenez underwent a left knee surgery last week to fix cartilage damage, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Justin Toscano reports (X link). The procedure comes with a recovery period of 8-12 months, so Jimenez is now in danger of missing the entire 2025 season.
There hadn’t been any indication that Jimenez was dealing with knee problems, as the reliever hasn’t been on the injured list for any reason since the very end of the 2022 campaign, when Jimenez was still pitching with the Tigers. In a follow-up post on X, Toscano notes that Jimenez hurt his knee during the season but pitched through the discomfort, and the extent of the injury wasn’t known until the surgery took place.
Atlanta acquired Jimenez for a two-prospect package (which included Justyn-Henry Malloy) in December 2022, and the righty has been nothing short of stellar in his two seasons in a Braves uniform. Jimenez had a 3.04 ERA over 56 1/3 innings in 2023, and then did even better in delivering a 2.62 ERA in 68 2/3 frames this past season. His strikeout rates have been elite across both seasons, but Jimenez drastically improved his hard-contact numbers from 2023 to 2024 — he jumped into the 91st percentile of all pitchers in both barrel rate and hard-hit ball rate, after not even making the tenth percentile in either category in 2023.
It was almost exactly one year ago that the Braves signed Jimenez to a three-year, $26MM contract extension just shortly before Jimenez was about to hit the free agent market. Jimenez earned $8MM in 2024 and is slated for $9MM in both 2025 and 2026, though that salary could end up being largely a sunk cost for the 2025 campaign depending on how much time he misses.
A return after the All-Star break would represent the best-case scenario for Jimenez, though the four-month range of his timeline creates a lot of gray area. In theory, Jimenez could miss most of the regular season and still be ready to participate in a playoff run, though the more time Jimenez misses, the trickier decision the Braves may face in deciding whether or not to activate a potentially rusty pitcher for critical postseason games.
The Braves had one of the league’s best bullpens in 2024, but A.J. Minter, Jesse Chavez, and Luke Jackson are all free agents, and now Jimenez will miss at least half of the season. Griffin Canning has already been brought into the rotation mix and, spending on any other starters acquired, Atlanta could dip into its young starting depth to reinforce the pen during the course of the 2025 season. Odds are that president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos was already planning to add a reliever or two to the mix anyway this winter, but Jimenez’s injury now might make the Braves a little more aggressive in shopping in this market.