Thursday, December 02, 2010

Bobby Jenks Was Better Than He Looked

The White Sox have non-tendered Bobby Jenks, thus avoiding having to pay him upwards of $9 million if they kept the pitcher through arbitration. Jenks has battled injuries the past year and the White Sox and particularly Ozzie Guillen soured on the closer. But was Jenks as bad as it looked? This Fan doesn't think so.

Jenks' walks were up slightly per nine, but he struck out a healthy 10.4 batters per nine innings and had an impressive 3.39 K/BB ratio, the second best of his career. His hits per nine innings were the highest of his career, at 9.2, but that seemed to be bad luck. His BABIP was very high at .344. He only gave up three homers for an excellent 0.5 per nine. So the only difference really between Jenks of two years ago and in 2011 was a few more walks and a lot of batted balls that fell in somewhere.

And Jenks was nails in 2011 in June and really struggled right after that. The eternal question is whether his ERA was 0.75 in June because his BABIP for the month was .259, or was his BABIP .259 because he pitched really well. The same in July. Was his ERA 7.56 because his BABIP in July was .445? Or was his BABIP .445 really high because he didn't pitch well? So confusing, eh?

The Fan guesses that the real question is Jenks' long term health potential? If he is going to be prone to injuries from here on out because of the violence of his delivery or can he get back to an even keel with his health. If he can be healthy, there is no reason why he can't reestablish his reputation and standing with another team and then continue on to a productive career. His numbers were far worse than he pitched last year. At least, that's the way this Fan sees it..

1 comment:

Josh Borenstein said...

You're right. He was better than his numbers would suggest. But I think the Sox are tired of him being so out of shape all of the time, and he had a few epic meltdown blown saves this year.