Adam Cimber lands big league deal with West Coast contender

By now it's no secret that the 2023 season was a lost one for Adam Cimber. The right-handed reliever just couldn't get over the injury bug and by the time he was ready to return to the big league mound, the season had come to a close.

Cimber, 33, made it into just 22 games for the Blue Jays with a ghastly 7.40 ERA. He carried an ERA under 3.00 through his first 10 outings but keeping runs off the board quickly became an issue for him and he just never recovered.

According to Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic, Cimber reached an agreement with the Los Angeles Angels on Wednesday. Jeff Passan of ESPN followed that up with the financial terms and confirmed that it is indeed a big league contract. The Angels will pay the six-year veteran will make $1.65M in the 2024 season.

While 2023 wasn't pretty, it can be easy to forget that Cimber is the same guy that was one of the more reliable arms out of the Blue Jays' pen for the past year and a half prior to this one. After coming over in a trade with the Marlins in 2021, he posted a 1.69 ERA across 39 outings and 37 appearances to round out that season. In 2022, he led the majors with 77 appearances and had a 2.80 ERA, 138 ERA+ and 3.47 FIP. He's a control artist who doesn't walk many batters but also incudes a ton of groundballs and has historically done a solid job of keeping the bases empty.

The interest around the league in Cimber isn't necessarily surprising, but him landing a major league contract somewhat is. Armed with one of the funkiest deliveries in recent memory, he's only a year or so removed from being a relief-pitching option that is solid as a rock. As Passan noted in his post on X, Cimber will be joining an Angels bullpen that is going to feature a group of new faces including the recently-signed Luis Garcia and southpaw Adam Kolarek.