And if wins and losses and saves were all we had to talk about, there wouldn't be much reason to even have a Talksox.
"We lost 9-6 last night."
"Yeah, I know, that sucks."
"OK, see you tomorrow."
If it's a 1 run game, I think both jobs are tough. I agree with Denny up to a certain point about the 9th inning, because there's a psychological aspect to being the last man standing. But I think it can be overstated, too.
But JD has probably been doing it his whole career, and he's got one of the highest OPS in baseball.
Hitting major league pitching is just incredibly hard to do when the pitchers are hitting their spots.
Any time you have a slim lead or are tied in the late innings it's high leverage, but in your comparison, the 8th inning would definitely be the tougher job.
I think with a good hitter like Verdugo at bat in that situation, you want him to hit the ball hard somewhere. And Verdugo is not an all-or-nothing guy, he uses the whole field.
Colome just made the right pitches.
Yeah, it's close. The only difference is that Gausman was coming off a very nice mini-season with the Giants.
Some people say there's no such thing as a bad one-year contract, too. But the Red Sox may balk at the 19 mill with respect to the luxury tax situation.