Thinking out Loud....

    I'm going to be headed upstate on Friday to a sibling's baseball tournament with the rest of my family, so that's nice, but I'll have less access to the blog.

    Now then, where was I? Oh yes. I was thinking to myself earlier today. While this isn't a particularly peculiar thing for me to do, what I thought of I wanted to share in complex fashion today. Well, here we go. Buckle up, especially if you don't agree with me.

    

    Josh Sborz. He's a relief pitcher on the Rangers. He struck out Ketel Marte looking to end the World Series in 2023. Simple facts. However, a few things came to mind while reliving this moment in my head about four hours ago. While a few of them I would love to go over, I'll go over the more indirect one that came up rather than the fact that the closer didn't close out the win!

    Josh Sborz had a 5.50 ERA in 2023 in 52 1/3 innings pitched. This is not good. I have long considered seasons like this among relievers bad. And yes, on the outside, and quite too often on the inside, they are. When your pitcher is just mediocre running on bad all year. I know what it's like. Anyway, in the postseason that magical year, Sborz pitched to an 0.75 ERA in twelve innings. This, obviously, is really good.

    Yes, I do like Josh Sborz, though he's not my favorite relief pitcher. More of a Jacob Latz guy myself. Wow, those two sentences sounded odd. I am currently working on filling out my favorite position players of 2024, but that's a post for a different day. 

    Anyway, Josh Sborz, like many relievers, gets really hot and looks like the best in the game, and then fizzles out and looks like the worst. Then he gets hot again, then he fails again. That'll happen sometimes. A bad outing really bloats the ERA of a reliever. A brilliant example of another reliever who suffers from this is another Josh, Hader.

What are you thinking? Maybe he just hit his all-time rival? I don't know.

    Although maybe not to the same degree.

    

    Anyway, if you take a look at every game Sborz pitched in 2023 (not that hard, only 44), you'd find that he was actually really good for most of the season, this meaning most of his appearanced. He had a few too many really bad outings across the whole of the 2023 season, especially on September fourth against the Astros, when he allowed 6 runs (5 earned) in two-thirds of an inning. What's the point I'm trying to make here again?

    It is this: ERA doesn't always define the season of a reliever. For the most part, Sborz was clutch in 2023. Even though Josh Hader was miserably bad in 2022, his postseason performance was really good. It's easier to see this when you work with the pitcher (well, I would think, I mean I've never coached a major league pitcher) because you see what he has and how he feels. It just goes to show that maybe not all the stats on paper suggest how good or bad somebody is. I use the example of Josh Sborz because the radio only gets Rangers games so I listened to him a lot. He also closed out the clinching World Series game, so that helped too. There are better pitchers out there to show this. I'm not sure this was the best way to get the point across, but at the time I thought it about Sborz; about how most of the time he was good, sometimes even untouchable, but then the bad outings came back to bite his ERA. Again, probably not the best example or explanation, but y'all get what I'm saying.

    So, there you go. Please tell me in the comments what you think of my point of view.

    And as for you, Josh Sborz can thank me next time I catch a Rangers game and he pitches. Over and out. 

    Oh, by the way, a friend asked me where the best place to get cards graded is. I don't grade cards (although there's this one patch card that looks really valuable......) so I don't know which companies are the best. If any of you have a favorite, please let me know. Thanks, and as always, happy collecting!