The Los Angeles Dodgers designated Josh Sborz for assignment as the corresponding move to create room on the 40-man roster for the addition of Trevor Bauer. The reigning National League Cy Young Award winner agreed to a three-year contract that was made official Thursday afternoon.
The Dodgers have seven days to trade, release or outright Sborz to the Minors. He was drafted by the club out of the University of Virginia in the second round in 2015. Sborz recently was named to the Virginia Baseball 2021 Hall of Fame Class.
The right-hander made his MLB debut in 2019 and went on to appear in seven games. He sported an 8.00 ERA, 5.88 FIP, 1.56 WHIP and had seven strikeouts over nine innings pitched. Sborz’s inflated ERA was largely due to allowing three runs in each of his first two games — one month apart.
He otherwise had four scoreless appearances in his final five games in 2019. Although in fewer opportunities, Sborz had better success last season. He finished with a 2.08 ERA, 5.96 FIP and 0.69 WHIP in four games. However, Sborz only recorded two strikeouts in 4.1 innings pitched.
Despite the reduced appearances last year, Sborz was seeing the benefit of pitching from a new arm angle. “During quarantine, I lowered my arm slot because I sort of lacked command,” Sborz explained last year.
“When I missed, it was a big miss. It was a 45-foot spiked fastball. Just lowering the arm slot kind of made my command go up. Also, another benefit was my elbow and shoulder pain has been real limited this year, which has been great. Being healthy so that every day I can get better and keep attacking.”
The change not only led to improved results on the mound, but Sborz no longer was experiencing elbow and shoulder trouble. Sborz credited Dodgers assistant pitching coach Connor McGuiness for helping him make the change.
“He just put that out there one time, because I had been playing catch with (Dennis) Santana and obviously he’s a little lower arm slot than I am. So I tried to emulate him a little bit, and the feeling with how it came out of my hand was just different,” Sborz said.
“I wanted to going at it and then threw a live, had really good results, the command was there, and that’s something I’ve sort lacked over the past couple of years. I figured keep rolling with it and when I took it into Spring Training 2.0, the results kept coming. I was like, might as well stick with it.”
Bauer excited to join Dodgers
Having grown up attending games at Dodger Stadium, Bauer regularly voiced his excitement in now being able to join the Dodgers. “I want to win a World Series,” he said during an introductory press conference.
“I’ve come in second both in college and the big leagues. I’m tired of it.”
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