Sborz Reliable Piece of Rangers Bullpen

ARLINGTON, Texas — No one has ever questioned the quality of stuff from Texas Rangers reliever Josh Sborz. The question has always been — can he locate?

The promise of combining the stuff with the location was something Rangers manager Bruce Bochy talked about during Spring Training. Marry the two, he said, and you have something.

Maybe Sborz has finally figured it out.

“I think you’ve seen it, coming in for the seventh and eighth innings,” Bochy said. “He’s helped us stop things and he’s gotten some big outs for us. He really made a lot of improvements in Spring Training. He had trouble finding strikes out there, but he’s coming with really good stuff and attacking the strike zone.”

On Monday, he entered the game against the Los Angeles Angels with two runners on and two out in a 5-5 game. He got Brandon Drury to ground out to end the frame. He threw a shutout eighth inning, giving up only a two-out double to Zach Neto.

It was his fifth appearance in a stretch in which Sborz has gone 1-0 with two holds. He hasn’t given up a run in 7 2/3 innings and he’s struck out 12.

This is why the Rangers did everything they could to keep the reliever, who had no minor league options going into the season and might have been designated for assignment had he not been injured to start the year.

The Rangers acquired Sborz in a trade for pitcher Jhan Zambrano after the Los Angeles Dodgers designated him for assignment in 2021. Since then he’s been on a constant yo-yo between the Rangers and Triple-A Round Rock.

What keeps the Rangers coming back is the stuff, as Bochy puts it. Sborz has three “plus-plus” pitches in the words of pitching coach Mike Maddux. Sborz throws a four-seam fastball, a slider and a curveball.

“When he blends them together he can run the table like he’s been doing,” Maddux said.

There are other signs when you dig into Statcast data. His whiff rate is 45 percent, and he’s struck out 33 of the 92 batters he’s faced. That leads the Rangers in relief strikeouts.

But if there’s any one thing that has changed for Sborz this season it’s his slider. It’s been a good pitch for him in the past. But he’s relying on it more this season and it’s paying off.

Last year he threw it a quarter of the time. He registered 11 strikeouts with the pitchers and batters hit .208 against it. That pitch had a whiff rate of 42.1 percent.

There’s a definite change in the quality of the pitch in 2023. He’s throwing the pitch 10 percent more often. But he’s already struck out nine hitters with the pitch. Hitters are batting .172 against it and the whiff rate is 51.5 percent.

Sborz hasn’t been perfect. He yielded five earned runs in two outings on May 17 and May 22 that shoved his ERA up to 5.06 (it’s 3.42 now). He blew a save in one of those games, at a time when nearly the entire Rangers bullpen was struggling.

But if this is the type of pitcher that Sborz can reliably be, then the wait would be worth it.

The AL West-leading Rangers (41-25) have lost the first two against the Angels series going into Wednesday night's third game. Andrew Heaney (4-4, 4.14) starts for Texas, with Reid Detmers (1-5, 4.79) going for Los Angeles. First pitch is scheduled for 7:05 p.m.

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