Rivals in college, top prospects Buehler and Sborz now motivate each other as Dodgers
By Cary Osborne
Heated rivals. I mean heated.
On June 25, 2014, it was Walker Buehler and his Vanderbilt Commodores holding up the College World Series championship trophy as Josh Sborz and his Virginia Cavaliers watched from the dugout.
Then June 24 the next year, it was Sborz hoisting the trophy with Buehler looking on.
“We hate each other,” Sborz joked on Saturday at Dodger Stadium, there coaching kids for the Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation Winter Youth Camp with fellow Dodger prospects. “On and off the field. Just pure hate. Just kidding.”
Coincidentally, yet fortunate, the Dodgers selected Buehler in the first round of the 2015 First-Year Player Draft with the 24th pick overall and Sborz, the 2015 College World Series Most Outstanding Player, in the second round with the 74th pick.
Today, the right-handers are two of the top-rated arms in the Dodger organization — Buehler the №7 overall prospect in the chain, according to MLB.com, and Sborz №15.
Both are tight and are helping motivate each other in their journey to a return to Dodger Stadium as Major Leaguers. They were roommates in 2016 minor league Spring Training and plan on rooming together again in 2017 — a significant year for both.
Buehler tore his ulnar collateral ligament in his right arm while at Vanderbilt and had Tommy John surgery on August 6, 2015, nearly a month after being drafted by the Dodgers. The initial hope for Buehler was to return to action and pitch in October during Instructional League.
“I beat the timeline,” Buehler said. “It was initially supposed to be 14 months. But I ended up pitching on a championship team. I kind of got lucky — the first team I play for wins a title. It’s not everything you hope for or gets you the year back, but it mends the wounds.”
Buehler returned to game action July 7, making his professional debut and pitching two innings for the Dodgers’ Low-A partner the Great Lakes Loons. He ended up appearing in five minor league games and pitching 10 scoreless innings, including five in the postseason for the Midwest League champion Loons. Of the 35 batters he faced, two managed to get a hit off him.
“I think coming back from surgery simplifies things for you so much more,” he explained on why he was dominant in his short return. “For me it was more about just throwing comfortably and throwing properly so I wouldn’t have pain. I wasn’t really thinking about do I want to make this ball do this and the next pitch do something completely different. It was just throw the ball toward the plate, and for me it really helped and let my stuff kind of play out. I was throwing harder down the stretch than I ever have in my life.”
Buehler went to Instructional League after the season, and said he will begin his throwing program on Monday.
“(My throwing program) is pretty normal,” Buehler said. “There might be some sort of innings limit (in 2017). No one wants to do that, but I think it’s the right thing. Throwing six months straight, eight months straight (during a season) it’s an adjustment because I only threw one month (in 2016).”
Sborz, for one, has little doubt how quickly Buehler will move forward after the surgery.
“That short little period they saw in Low-A, it wasn’t out of the ordinary (for him to have that success),” Sborz said. “That’s a normal thing to him. He’s out there dominating for a reason.”
As for Sborz, he hit the ground running after being drafted, having pitched in Rookie League Ogden and Great Lakes in 2015, then making the jump to High-A Rancho Cucamonga in 2016. The Dodgers had a plan early on for the former dominant reliever who tossed 13 scoreless innings in the 2015 CWS — make him a starter.
He spent a majority of 2016 with Rancho and started 19 games for the Quakes.
Among pitchers with at least 100 innings pitched, his 2.66 ERA and 1.03 WHIP were tops in the noted hitters’ league. In August, he was promoted to Double-A Tulsa, where he made 10 appearances, all in relief, and had a 3.78 ERA/1.38 WHIP in 16 2/3 innings.
On his preference, starter or reliever, Sborz said: “I would rather start, but personally I don’t really care. Whatever way I get to the big leagues is kind of the way I want to go.”
He said a change in his mechanics has allowed him to successfully convert to a starter and maintain strength and stamina. In college, when he took the ball out of his glove, he dropped his arm low behind him and then delivered a pitch. With the Dodgers, the drop is less pronounced.
“When I got (to the Dodgers, they) basically told me they wanted to make it more simplified, make it easier on my body,” Sborz said. “In the offseason, Spring Training, they made it more fluid, more functional for me, and it really paid off because I felt strong the entire year. A lot of it has to do with that. The simpler motion makes things easier. You can pay attention to how the hitter hits instead of your mechanics. There’s more deception now. When I pulled the ball out of my glove you could see it behind me. And the whole time we were also working on hiding the ball all the way up. Maybe we lost a little deception on my glove side, but with my arm I hide the ball longer so it makes up for it.”
“It’s true deception,” Buehler chimed in.
Yeah, they’re way past rooting against each other. Both players said they connected early on because they came from universities with high expectations and high demands. So they knew they would be alike in terms of work ethic and drive.
And now they have a common goal — get to the show together.
“That was always the goal from the beginning,” Sborz said. “I was glad I got a little head start on him because he’s probably not going to be far behind. He’ll probably be up quick.”
