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A Quick Plea To Rangers Fans

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Please, please, please recognize that Colby Lewis is awesome.

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Coming in to tonight, only eleven AL pitchers had a better rate of swinging strikes. He came out striking out nearly a batter an inning and proceeded to strike out 10 Angels in seven on the road. His 3.83 ERA is good, but actually higher than his fantastic 3.67 Fielding Independent Pitching ERA (which is exactly the same as his tRA, by the way). And they’re only that high because he pitches half his games in Arlington!

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Before tonight, FanGraphs had him as worth 3.7 wins above a replacement-level player on the season. That is good for 13th in the AL among starting pitchers, roughly the level of an All-Star-caliber player, and very much more than we expected out of him. StatCorner and tRA paint an even better picture of what Colbyashi has done when his batted ball rations are included, putting him at 5.6 wins above replacement. Both of those numbers are likely to go up after tonight.

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Unfortunately, he’s getting a paltry 3.9 runs of support per nine innings. It’s hard to win games when your team is only scoring about as much as you’re giving up. In fact, it means you’re probably going to have about a .500 record, perhaps worse thanks to the rules that go in to decisions.

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Please, please, please don’t be one of those people who looks at wins and losses. 11-13 does not begin to tell you how great Colby Lewis has been this season.

Photographs by jamesbrandon, jdtornow, phlezk, flygraphix, mcdlttx, tomasland, and literalbarrage used in background montage under Creative Commons. Thank you.