Joe Borowski is selling something.

The idea that all he needed was a good message is beyond ridiculous.

Relievers are volatile. Borowski may have been pretty unlucky in his 17 IP this season, ending up with a 7+ ERA. Then again, he may have been lucky last year to have a 5+ ERA.

In any event, how can we seriously consider a failure on the part of the staff when the result was so unsurprising, and Borowski not only hasn’t gotten a single out for another team, he hasn’t even been signed?

Hello Jay,

Good point – I suspect Borowski is certainly trying to “paint himself in a positive light,” but I just never heard of a knot in his right lat muscle (perhaps I missed it, though) and wondered whether that could have been a major contributor to the loss of his “stuff.”

Granted, I was never that impressed with Borowski’s stuff, and by the stats and such, it seemed ML hitters weren’t all that impressed with either, so of the two scenarios you mentioned, I would suspect the 2007 season was the luckier one, though I don’t know if Borowski is AS bad as his 2008 season was.

He seemed like he was more “passable,” so I’d suspect if his stuff rebounded that he’d be better than what he was in 2008, but I do think that his ability to save 45 games last year was at least somewhat attributable to luck and good defense – there were several jams he was in that could have resulted in more blown saves, but a good defensive play or a poor swing at a pitch way out of the zone bailed Borowski out of several of the jams he often found himself in.

Like I said, I wasn’t trying to blame the staff, but at the same time, I was just a bit surprised there had been no mention of the scar tissue and knot under Borowski’s right lat muscle before now – is that just Borowski painting himself in a positive light or did the Indians’ staff possibly miss something, maybe due to the fact that Borowski himself didn’t tell absolutely everything to them like he did to Fischer’s?

Just my 2 cents.

Totally. It was just a knot.

I’m sure mentally, Joe’s arm does feel better after not having to pitch for over a month. Like Jay said .. Joe is selling himself. If/when he gets back … see how his stats do before you cast blame on the medical staff.

After his “dead arm” injury, his breaking ball was noticeably improved .. but his fastball was still slow and flat. If he can’t get that pitch back up to 88mph with some movement, he is done as a reliever.

I will not lose any sleep over letting Borowski go, ever.

The reason we got Borowski in the first place was that his shoulder was a ticking time bomb which would at some point fail (he failed a physical with the Phillies I think before we signed him). No mystery massage is going to fix that.

Ya know what’s funny? Antonetti’s brother’s a doctor – works in the DC area.

And here it is, 3 days later and Joe Borowski is still unsigned.

Weird.