Left-hander Bruce Zimmermann is signing with the Hanwha Eagles of the Korea Baseball Organization for the remainder of the season, the team announced this weekend (hat tip to Dan Kurtz of MyKBO.net). The Covenant Sports Group client is guaranteed $370K for the rest of the season with a chance to pick up another $70K worth of incentives.
Zimmermann, 31, briefly pitched in the majors with the Cardinals this season, tossing five innings and allowing three runs. That marked his sixth season with some time spent at the major league level. He’s pitched a total of 169 1/3 innings in the majors since his 2020 debut with the Orioles. Most of that time has been spent with Baltimore, but Zimmermann tossed six innings with the Brewers last year in addition to his brief cameo with St. Louis in 2026.
Across his six big league seasons, Zimmermann has worked to an unsightly 5.63 earned run average. His 17.3% strikeout rate is well shy of average, but his 5.2% walk rate is excellent. He’s a quintessential finesse lefty, sitting in the 90 mph range on his fastball and relying on command to overcome a lack of swing-and-miss. That approach hasn’t served him too well in the big leagues, but Zimmermann has a 4.11 ERA in parts of seven Triple-A seasons — a total of 523 innings pitched. He started 15 games for the Cardinals’ top affiliate in Memphis this season and logged a tidy 3.78 ERA with a 25.7% strikeout rate, 6.4% walk rate and 42.9% ground-ball rate.
The Cardinals designated Zimmermann for assignment and sent him outright to Memphis earlier this month. He rejected his outright assignment in favor of free agency and will now head overseas on a stronger guarantee than he’d make were he to spend the balance of the season in Triple-A.
It’s fairly common for midseason signings of this nature, when they perform well anyhow, to re-sign with the club the following year. If Zimmermann does show well in his first stint overseas, he could command a seven-figure salary to return to the Eagles next year. Pitching well would also potentially create interest from other KBO clubs and/or teams in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball.
