Ryan Burr was purchased from the Phillies in May last season. He is a right-handed relief pitcher, 30 years old (31 at the end of May).
As an aside, I found 11 Blue Jays players with the first name Ryan; I figured there would be many more. I found 19 Toms, Tommys, or Thomas; I didn’t count Tomas Perez. At one time, I wanted to put together All-Time All-Star teams by first name, but it turned out to be too much like work. Unlike when I was thinking of doing it, there are some websites that would make it much easier, but maybe no less tedious.
But I digress. Hey, if you were writing a post about Ryan Burr, you would digress some too.
Burr has pitched in 100 MLB games spread over five seasons, all with the White Sox. In his career, he has a 4.10 ERA.
He pitched in 34 games for us, 4 as an opener. He had a 4.13 ERA (98 ERA+). In 32.2 innings he allowed 29 hits, 4 home runs, 12 walks and 47 strikeouts. That’s a lot more strikeouts than I thought he had, a 33.6% strikeout rate.
Batters hit .228/.300/.402 against him, a 97 OPS+.
He is a two-pitch pitcher, a slider (60. 5% of the time last year), and a four-seamer (39.5%), and he averaged 94.1 mph last year.
Ryan was kind of the definition of the league-average pitcher last year, but with the pen we had, league average seemed pretty good. I’m not sure why he wasn’t better than that, striking out a third of the batters he faced. It appears that Pete Walker found something that helped his strikeout rate.
Burr was much better vs. RHP (.659 OPS, .775 vs. LHB), which is much in line with his career numbers.
The strikeout rate was a new thing. In his career, he has struck out 24.6% of batters, including last year. But then his ground ball rate dropped to 32.5% (career number 45.5%).
Steamer believes in Burr. It has him pitching in 48 games and 48 innings (both career highs) with a 3.65 ERA. He has an option year left, which gives him some extra value.