The Blue Jays announced that lefty reliever Ryan Borucki has been outrighted to Triple-A Buffalo. He went unclaimed on waivers after being designated for assignment on Monday.
Borucki had sufficient service time to decline a minor league assignment. He probably would’ve remained unsigned for the rest of the season had he chosen free agency. Manager John Schneider said Monday that Borucki was hoping to stick with the organization (relayed by Arden Zwelling of Sportsnet). That’ll come to fruition after he accepted the outright assignment.
Toronto signed Borucki to a minor league contract late last month after he was released by the Pirates. The Jays selected his contract a little over a week later. Borucki managed 4 1/3 scoreless frames across four appearances, though he walked four of the 19 hitters he faced. The southpaw tossed 30 2/3 innings for the Bucs earlier in the season, working to a 5.28 earned run average. He had middling strikeout and walk numbers but got ground-balls at a 55% clip.
The Jays are familiar with Borucki, whom they drafted out of high school more than a decade ago. That came under a previous front office, but he spent his first four and a half MLB seasons with Toronto under the current regime. Brendon Little and Eric Lauer are the two southpaws in John Schneider’s bullpen. Mason Fluharty, Justin Bruihl and Easton Lucas are on the 40-man roster and on optional assignment. Borucki no longer carries a 40-man spot but that’s largely because he could not be optioned. The Jays might still view him as their third-best lefty reliever and could bring him back if Little or Lauer suffer an injury.
Borucki’s results (ERA ~4.6) lined up with FRA, but SIERA suggests he could be better than the surface numbers if his strikeout and walk profile sustains. The gap between SIERA (~4.0) and ERA/FRA (~4.6) points to him being undervalued if you only look at runs allowed.. Borucki may have some hidden upside that his raw ERA doesn’t fully show.
And all pretty useless stats because he pitched about 35 innings. Just way too small of a sample size to draw conclusions. Although FIP, xFIP, SIERA, are better metrics than ERA (especially for relievers) because they stabilize better in smaller samples, it’s to too small of a sample. At best they are indicators of performance.
@NoSaint
Calling FRA, SIERA, or xERA ‘useless’ over 35 innings misses the entire point. Nobody’s pretending relievers give us 200-inning samples — the models are designed to squeeze signal out of limited data by focusing on K/BB/HR rates instead of noisy run totals. ERA takes hundreds of innings to stabilize, but strikeout and walk rates don’t. That’s why front offices actually use these metrics. If you throw them out because the sample is small, you may as well admit you’ve got no way to evaluate relievers at all.
If you want to throw out a single season because it’s 35 innings, fine — but we’re talking about a guy with 8 seasons and 256.1 career innings. That’s plenty of sample to see the pattern. His career ERA (4.28) lines up almost exactly with his FIP (4.34) and xFIP (4.40), with xERA (4.63) and FRA showing the same mid-4 pitcher profile. The whole point of FRA, SIERA, etc. is to strip out noise in small samples, and when you zoom out over his career the story is consistent: he’s a middle reliever with stretches of over/underperformance. Pretending the numbers are ‘useless’ just ignores the fact they keep converging on the same conclusion year after year.
Now, back to your man cave and don’t return until you understand a bit of baseball.
@Old York
Look at leverage stats when looking to evaluate relievers. That lesson in baseball was free. No need to thank me for helping you understand baseball.
@NoSaint
That’s all you have to contribute? Wow!
If you look at his career leverage stats they sit around league average or slightly below average.
fangraphs.com/players/ryan-borucki/16350/stats?pos…
What are you looking at?
@Old York
I’m looking at a post that is using ineffective stats for relievers over a small size. Don’t get me started using career stats. That’s another kettle of fish.
*shrugs
@NoSaint
I’m waiting…
@Old York
What’cha waiting for buttercup?
@NoSaint
To contribute something…
@Old York
I did. Shrugging like saying meh or whatever are contributions of indifference. As in this is no big deal. Is the concept of contribution foreign to you or are you trolling me?
Trump will be crying when we win it all
@Darkomilicic
They’ll get to visit the WH when they win.