Bay City Ball

As I sit in a Best Western somewhere in Virginia, I’m typing this post up while I watch the local Spanish channel. The show is muted, my ability to speak and understand Spanish is extremely rudimentary, but every actor is speaking with an intense furor. I don’t need the audio to see that. Everyone talks with huge exaggerated hand motions while looking like they could pop just-this-very-minute. The obvious hunk on the show, who looks like a cross between Fabio and a pro-wrestler, intensely stomps around the screen while wearing a pink button down short sleeve shirt, with a pink matching tie. I really need to brush up on my Spanish.

Whatever this show is called, it has a controlled fury that teeters on the edge of sheer ridiculousness. Everyone seems to be going a million-miles-an-hour and in different directions. The tanned bimbos with huge collagen injected lips. The body builder-looking guys that chase them. The older business men in three piece suits that are always plotting some diabolical scheme. Everyone is primed and ready to blow up at any second.

This is how I kinda feel when talking about Noah Lowry with Giants fans.

I will say something like:

“Boy, Noah Lowry’s peripherals sure are scary, I’m rather concerned about his ability to not totally stink in the future”

I’ll undoubtedly hear back something like:

“Noah Lowry is [clutch/gritty/cute/a gamer] and he knows how to [win/battle/give-his-team-a-chance] just look at this [poor stat], you’re just wrong!”

Lowry exploded onto the scene during the season in 2004 when the Giants called him up. In 92-innings he posted a 3.82 ERA while throwing a video game changeup that had every major-leaguer swinging out of their fashionable cleats. Lowry was a fairly nondescript prospect — didn’t throw hard or have a lot of press — but when he came to the majors, he got a lot of people excited. Including me.

I still remember this game against the Reds from ‘04 when Lowry took Giants fans by surprise. 9 innings pitched, 3 hits, 9 strike outs, and no runs. He was a lefty, didn’t throw terribly hard, but the change was a thing of beauty and many fans were hooked. Going into the 2005 season, a lot of people expected a breakout season from Lowry and they got the very thing they wished for.

In ‘05 Lowry posted a 3.78 ERA in over 200-innings of baseball. The changeup was still giving hitters fits and his record of 13-13 pleased a lot of fans. Including me. He was a young lefty that could fill the lefty void after Kirk Rueter left the team. ‘05 was the year when Reuter’s luck finally ran out. He left the Giants and baseball after posting an ERA of 5.95. Only 24-years-old, Lowry’s promise seemed high.

But 2006 would be a difficult year for Lowry. In his very first start of the season against the Atlanta Braves, Lowry strained his oblique after 2 innings of pitching and had to come out of the game. He was sidelined for an entire month until May. When he came back, he didn’t have the strikeout stuff that he showed in his first 1.5 seasons. The league adjusting to him? Maybe. But the oblique injury led to a lot of speculation that Lowry was having trouble “pulling” down and “finishing” his pitches. He finished the year with a disappointing 4.74 ERA.

Coming into 2007 everyone was ready for the vintage 04-05 Lowry to reappear. Throwing dastardly change after change, keeping hitters off balance, posting a modest K-rate, and becoming once again, a solid young member of the Giants rotation. If you judged Lowry’s season by the “baseball card” numbers, it doesn’t look so bad. He won a career high 14 games and kept his ERA under 4. His ERA of 3.92 was almost a full run lower than his ‘06 ERA. But Lowry ran into forearm troubles near the end of the year and had to miss the final month. The changeup didn’t seem to be there anymore for Lowry and it appeared that he was throwing a slow, looping curve more than the beloved change. Myself and many other Giants fans started to become concerned about Lowry.

Spring Training has been no safe haven thus far for Lowry. His first start against the Cubs brought with it some of his wildness from ‘07. But, what’s really gotten people talking was his last start against the Texas Rangers. He walked 9 batters in 1-inning, threw 2 wild pitches, and several to the back stop. After the game, Lowry left without speaking to the press and it has since been discovered that Lowry has wrist tendinitis. He’s supposed to sit out for a “few days” but Lowry’s injury troubles over the last few years have become a real source of concern.

Whats the Big Deal?

Talking about Lowry is often a hot-button-topic with Giants fans. For whatever reason, people seem to get really defensive about him. But, the facts are that Lowry has had a down trending since his breakout ‘05. My main concern with Lowry — besides his injury troubles which surely contribute to his recent problems — have been that he’s striking out less hitters while walking more. Sounds simple, right? Pitchers can’t control much of what happens after they throw a ball. How many batters they walk, strike out, and the type of contact to an extent are on the short list of things that a pitcher can control. Two of those three things — K’s and BB’s — are important outcomes that Lowry has gotten worse at over the past few years.

I decided to graph out, by month and year, Lowry’s K% and BB% since ‘05 to ‘07. League average K% tends to be around 16% and BB% tends to be around 8%. BB% is a little higher in the AL because of the DH.

Here’s how Lowry has done, month-by-month, from ‘05-’07. Also, I didn’t include April/Mar of ‘06 and Sept/Oct. of ‘08 because Lowry was injured and either barely pitched — 2 innings in April/Mar of ‘06 — or didn’t pitch at all — Sept/Oct. ‘08.

For 2005, Lowry’s K% and BB% on the year was 19.5% and 8.68% respectively. He had an above average K% and right around league average for BB%. Lowry started his trend of strong August performances in ‘05 with a K% of 22.4% and a very-low BB% of 6.1%. Those are very strong numbers. Lowry posted excellent K% numbers in May, July, and August. Each month his K% was above 20%. I think it’s interesting to note that Lowry’s control has always been around average. In ‘05 his BB% was just around league average but his K% was above league average. I think you can make a case that when Lowry stopped striking out hitters like he used to in ‘05, was when he really started to run into some trouble.

As you can see, in ‘06 Lowry’s control essentially stayed the same. Popping up and over the league average BB% line throughout the season but after Lowry’s oblique strain, he stopped striking out hitters. This is key. You can tell when the injury happened because the K% drops sharply from an average of 19.5% in ‘05 to an average of 11.86% in ‘06. Part of the drop could be due to better scouting or the league becoming more accustomed to Lowry but I’d bet that most of that near 8% drop had to do with Lowry’s injury. Lowry lost the ability to strikeout hitters which greatly hurt his game.

Here’s where things get even messier. Despite his nice ERA and W/L record in ‘07, Lowry’s peripherals further deteriorated. Lowry actually boosted his K% slightly in ‘07 — from 11.86% to 12.38% — but Lowry’s undoing was his BB% which was among the worst in the majors in ‘07. His BB% on the year was 12.58%. It’s just not possible to be walking that many guys and still be successful. Lowry’s below average K% — even though it was boosted slightly, it was still below average — and very poor BB% is what had many Giants fans concerned about Lowry’s future prospects, despite his ERA or W/L record.

This is exactly why ERA is a bad predictive measure of a pitchers ability.I can’t stress that enough. Lowry’s sub-4 ERA looks nice on the surface but there was a whole-buncha’ bad stuff going on under the surface. Taking into account things like BB%, K%, LD%, GB%, and a few other stats are much, much more useful and accurate at predicting a players future performance than just ERA. ERA can really mask a lot of bad things going on in a pitchers background, like Lowry’s declining K’s and increasing BB’s.

Throughout 2007 Lowry’s control got worse and by the years end, he had to exit early because of forearm problems. This is why many GM’s were scared off by Lowry and hesitant to trade for him. Any GM worth his salt would be able to quickly look at Lowry’s underlying stats and know that something bad was around the corner.

Here’s the same graph above, but with the league K% and BB% removed and linear trend lines added to Lowry’s K% and BB% from ‘05-’07 when looked at month-by-month.

K’s go down. Walk’s go up. Bad signs for a pitcher.

Lowry did slightly increase his GB% in 2007 but up until that year, he’d always been a flyball pitcher. So, I’ll not put much stock into Lowry reinventing himself as a GB pitcher. Also, his GB% was far from what I’d consider a strong groundballer.

Walking into the Future?

I’ve been accused of “just not liking Noah Lowry” but the fact is, I’ve always been a fan of him. I like nothing more than watching a pitcher with a great change make hitters look bad. Especially when the pitcher doesn’t throw extremely hard, it’s just fun to watch.

But I can’t ignore the facts.

1) Lowry has had health concerns every year since his very good 2005 season. It’s assured that his health problems have contributed somewhat to his decline but I can’t say for sure how much. His recent Spring Training problems — even though I don’t put any stock into Spring Training stats themselves — are alarming. Not so much because of the results, but because they fit into where he’s been trending towards the last few years. The “tendinitis” is another bump in Lowry’s health history.

2) His K% has been dropping since 2005. He slightly boosted it in ‘07 but a boost of 1% isn’t enough for Lowry. Furthermore, it’s still below average while his BB% is grossly high. When Lowry was having success, he was striking out batters, a skill that he’s either lost because of injury or ineffectiveness.

3) His BB% has also gotten worse. Like I said directly above, it’s extremely bad. A pitcher can’t be successful if he’s walking 5 guys per 9 innings, theres no two ways around it.

I’ve always been a fan of Noah Lowry and I’ll continue to be one. Because of his contract, if he can even pitch close to league average he’s going to have some value in today’s pitching market — one that’s giving Livan Hernanndez a potential $5M+ to pitch — but each year he’s further removed from his ‘05 season and as the injury concerns continue to pile up, his future gets a little dimmer each day. I’d love nothing more for Lowry to get healthy this year and come back strong. I’ll just remain pessimistically optimistic until then.