2024 Rangers season in review: David Robertson

With the 2024 regular season over, it is time for us to go back and take a look at the players who appeared for the Texas Rangers this season.

Today, we look at pitcher David Robertson.

In a season filled with letdowns and underperforming from various players, David Robertson did what he was supposed to do. He was signed to give the Rangers a reliable veteran late inning guy in the pen, someone who Bruce Bochy could trust in the 8th inning of games, and David Robertson was a reliable veteran late inning guy in the pen who Bruce Bochy could trust in the 8th inning of games.

Such an experience was especially refreshing after 2023's season-long late inning dramarama. When David Robertson came into the game, you didn't have that sphincter-tightening that you had in 2023 when, well, just about anyone came into a close game in the 8th inning. No, when David Robertson came into the game, you were generally pretty chill, because you knew David Robertson was going to handle his business, because that's what David Robertson has done pretty much his entire career.

David Robertson has a pretty unusual repertoire. His primary pitch is a cutter, which he threw 63.4% of the time in 2024. Only four pitchers who threw at least 500 pitches in 2024 threw a cutter more than half of the time. Aside from Robertson, they were Kenley Jansen (84.9%), Emmanuel Clase (77.8%), and Jesse Chavez (51.1%).

Incidentally, I started to say that Robertson's primary pitch isn't a fastball, but a cutter is classified as a type of fastball, along with the sinker and the four seamer. I tend to think of it more as a breaking ball, but that's just me.

His primary secondary is a knuckle curve. That is a pitch that not a lot of pitchers throw in the year of 2024. Again using a 500 pitch threshold, only 43 pitches threw a knuckle curve last year, and of those 43, about a third of them threw it less than 10% of the time. David Robertson threw his knuckle curve 26.8% of the time, 11th most of that group.

He has a slider he throws occasionally, and Statcast says he threw 21 changeups and 17 sinkers, apparently just for yuks. But Robertson for the most part is a two-pitch pitcher, and those two pitches are pretty unusual pitches. One has to wonder if that isn't a contributing factor to his being able to stick around as long as he has, with so much success...you have to think that throwing pitches that are seen by hitters less frequently would give the pitcher an edge of sorts.

Robertson made his major league debut in 2008 and wasn't very good. He missed most of 2019, all of 2020, and most of 2021 due to Tommy John surgery, throwing just 18 innings in those three seasons combined. In every other season, however, David Robertson has been a quality relief pitcher. For 13 seasons — from 2009-18, and 2022-24 — Robertson has had an ERA+ of 114 or better in each year, throwing at least 60 innings in every one of those seasons other than 2009, with his 72 innings in 2024 being a regular season career high. He has a career 2.91 ERA and 2.94 FIP, a career 144 ERA+, and a career bWAR of 21.7.

That's impressive.

David Robertson has also been around forever. He was teammates with Mariano Rivera (the cutter god, and someone who influenced the young David Robertson) for the first six years of his career. Robertson debuted the same year as Elvis Andrus. He debuted the year before Buster Posey debuted, and Posey had a Hall of Fame career and retired and now is a general manager, all of which took place in the midst of David Robertson's career.

Here's a fun fact — David Robertson is 10th all time in career postseason innings pitched for a pitcher who has only pitched in relief in the postseason, with 47.1 IP. Mariano Rivera and Kenley Jansen, who we discussed earlier, are 1-2, and maybe there's some connection between cutter dominance and postseason relief success. The others ahead of him, if you're interested, are Rollie Fingers, Ryan Madson, Mike Stanton, Jeff Nelson, Tug McGraw, Mike Timlin, and Aroldis Chapman.

In those 47.1 postseason innings, Robertson has allowed 16 runs. 6 of those runs were against the Rangers. 5 of those runs came in Game 3 of the 2010 ALDS, when he relieved Boone Logan with one on and no one out in the 9th of a game the Rangers were leading 2-0, retired one of six batters faced, and was yanked for Sergio Mitre. Being pulled for Sergio Mitre mid-inning is never a good thing.

The 6th run came in Game 6 of the ALDS, when Phil Hughes was pulled with two outs after allowing a two run double to Vlad Guerrero to give the Rangers a 3-1 lead. Robertson promptly gave up a home run to Nelson Cruz to make it a 5-1 game, which is the point, if you remember, where we all began jumping up and down in anticipation of the Rangers advancing to the World Series.

Robertson finished out that inning and then was relieved by Kerry Wood, and damn, David Robertson has been around for so long he was teammates with Kerry Wood.

Robertson also allowed 5 runs in the 2017 ALCS to the Trash Can Bangers, which means over two-thirds of the runs David Robertson has ever allowed in the postseason came in ALCS games against teams from the Lone Star State.

Anyway, Robertson will probably sign another one year deal this offseason, almost certainly with a team with playoff aspirations that is looking for a reliable veteran presence in the bullpen to handle the late innings. The Rangers, I'm sure, would love to have him back. If I'm Kansas City or Detroit — young teams that had surprising playoff appearances in 2024 — I'd be blowing up Robertson's phone right now.

And David Robertson will continue doing David Robertson things, until his arm falls off or his cutter stops cutting.

Previously:

Jesus Tinoco

Marcus Semien

Josh Sborz

Sam Huff

Jacob deGrom

Michael Lorenzen

Adolis Garcia