This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.
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"The Rangers hit -- 30 home runs and nearly six runs a game -- and they played defense, and they pitched just well enough. Their overall pitching stats don’t look great, a 3.83 ERA, but that was inflated by the terrible performance of the back of their staff, often after games were decided. Bruce Bochy had six pitchers carry 72% of the workload, and those pitchers put up a 3.00 ERA. At the start of the month, I’d have bet that their bullpen would cough up their postseason hopes. Bochy got 33 2/3 innings of 2.14 ERA ball from Josh Sborz, Aroldis Chapman, and Jose Leclerc during this run, and that group took just the one loss. Last night, Sborz threw the longest outing of his MLB career, 2 1/3 innings, to end the World Series."