Wednesday, August 29, 2007

JoBo is What?

Last night on Sportstime Ohio and on Indians.com they had polls asking who was the best closer in the AL central this year. The biased answer is JoBo, but the right answer is Joe Nathan. According to BPro's Pitcher's VORP page, Borowski is currently the Indians worst reliever on the roster. Frankly, I agree with them. I do not feel comfortable with:




First off, for any of you unfamiliar with what WXL or LEV mean, check out the definitions at Baseball Prospectus' Glossary.
If you look at the chart you can see that JoBo is used in the Indians highest leverage situations this year, but hes the worst reliever on the chart based up WXL. Now the Indians have had some worse relievers on the roster this year. Cabrera and Hernandez come to mind, but that is no excuse to be putting Borowski in with the game on the line. Luckily, for us Indians fans, when Wedge has been using Perez and Betancourt almost exclusively in the 7th and 8th innings they have been in high leverage situations and it hasn't really cost the Tribe this past week or two.

However, the way Wedge use this trio of relievers last night made me want to scream. He brought Perez in the face ONE batter in the seventh. Why not bring him back out there in the 8th and keep Betancourt ready if needed? If Perez goes through the eighth without any problems than that leaves Betancourt for the ninth. But, with the way the 7th and 8th worked with the way Wedge used them it left the 8th, 9th, and 1 hitters for JoBo in the 9th with a 6-3 lead. Easy save right? Of course not, JoBo instead gave up 2 runs and was left with a showdown with Morneau to decide the game. Not a situation I would ever want to be in again and expect to end up with a Tribe victory.