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October 16, 2007

TSN: Borowski > Papelbon

The Sporting News has chosen Joe Borowski as the American League's best closer.

How is the best closer determined? Not by votes of players and managers, as TSN's other awards are, but by this magic formula: "saves plus wins".

Forget all this stuff:
     Papelbon  Borowski
ERA 1.85 5.07
ERA+ 246 87
WHIP .771 1.431
BB/K 15/84 17/58
AVG .146 .289
OBP .219 .332
SLG .244 .436
BABIP .216 .335
This is what is is all about:
     Papelbon  Borowski
Wins 1 4
SV 37 45
38 49
Borowski's ERA+ was 87 -- roughly equal to Julian Tavarez (89) or Kyle Farnsworth (90). He also blew 8 saves to Bot's 2.

I did find that Borowski had more tougher saves than Bot did.
             Papelbon  Borowski
1 Run Save 15 41% 19 42%
2 Run Save 9 24% 16 36%
3 Run Save 11 30% 10 22%
(The numbers don't add up exactly, because BR said Bot had two saves when he entered the game up by four runs and Borowski had one of those.)

Nevertheless, this should effectively destroy any and all remaining credibility The Sporting News might have had as a source for intelligent baseball information.

5 comments:

  1. redsock, just out of curiosity, I wonder how Putz stacks up to them? He's been #1 in my mind (I think he reeled off 20+ in a row or something)

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  2. Think you said it best earlier this season, RS...something about "chunks of Borowski in Snuffer's stool"?

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  3. Fox also was playing up the Borowski "more saves than any of these power pitchers" angle last night. And I'm just sitting there like, Okay, but please tell the audience about how much better Pap was regardless of number of saves. But they didn't.

    By the way, was it the April 1st edition of TSN? That's the only explanation I can think of, and it's October, so, probably not.

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  4. i listen to alot of xm radio and their commentary. all year long, cleveland fans have been calling in to the "baseball this morning" show, complaining about borowski and wondering when wedge would give the ball to another guy for the last three outs. this happens about once a week. every time, buck martinez defends borowski and goes into this long "you don't give up on your closer in mid-stream" routine. and every caller is like "but he sucks, looks at his numbers" and "i can't stand watching the end of a close game when he's in there".

    for obvious reasons, i wanted the sox to tear a new one in borowski. i also was hoping to hear buck backpeddaling on his morning show. neither happened. maybe tonight!

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  5. This is truely the most absurd decision I've heard out of SN.
    I used to be a religious follower of SN, but have been very unimpressed lately.
    This just about closes the book on them as far as I'm concerned.

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