Well that didn’t take long. Around 24 hours or so after electing free agency rather than a demotion to the Atlanta Braves’ Triple-A affiliate — and just a few days after he was unceremoniously DFA’d by his former team — Craig Kimbrel has found a new home, reportedly signing a Minor League deal with the Texas Rangers on Tuesday evening.

For the Rangers, this is as simple as taking a flier on a reliever with tons of high-leverage experience. That’s something Texas could desperately use right now: Bruce Bochy has struggled for stability in the ninth inning all year long, with Luke Jackson, Jacob Webb, Robert Garcia and others all failing to capitalize on their shot at the closer’s role. With an offense that remains stuck in neutral, the Rangers are going to have to pitch their way back into contention in the AL West, and that means finding bullpen solutions that can be trusted to protect a close lead late. Those solutions have yet to emerge, so why not see what Kimbrel has left in the tank?

Of course, the Braves also have been desperately searching for some bullpen stability, and this whole situation now has the chance to blow up in their face.

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Craig Kimbrel has the chance to get one over on the Braves … if he has enough left in the tank

In a vacuum, you can understand why the Braves handled the Kimbrel situation the way they did. The team needed bullpen help amid Raisel Iglesias’ ongoing implosion, and Kimbrel is the most decorated reliever in franchise history. So they gave him a chance, but while he put up impressive numbers in the Minors, his lone MLB appearance against the San Francisco Giants last week was shaky enough — he sat in the low 90s with his fastball and only avoided giving up one or more runs thanks to some base-running blunders — that the team decided he wasn’t the answer.

Of course, these decisions don’t happen in a vacuum. In the real world, it looks a lot like Atlanta strung a franchise icon along just to abruptly cut him loose after a scoreless outing — all while the relievers still on the roster were still imploding left and right.

It’s entirely possible that Alex Anthopoulos and Co. were right here; Kimbrel is now 37, with much-diminished stuff, and it’s still more likely than not that he’s simply not an above-average big-league reliever at this point in his career. They’d better hope they are, though, especially now that he’s found a new home and a clean path to important innings. Because Atlanta’s own bullpen situation shows no sign of improving any time soon, and if Kimbrel starts throwing up zeroes elsewhere, fans are going to be even more disgruntled than they already are.