Bay City Ball

The Giants won another game in their last at-bat yesterday when Manny Burriss scampered home to score the winning run after Marlins closer, Kevin Gregg, uncorked a wild pitch in the dirt that got away from Paul Lo Duca John Baker — sweet, sweet, Schadenfreude. Who says you need to hit to win games? In the eyes and minds of the Giants management, this was the blueprint for this years team. Pitch well enough to stay close in games, steal some bags, play some defense, and do all the little things to win games.

It seems like “Blueprint Games” have been few and far between, mostly because it’s really hard to whittle away against a major league team for nine innings and still come away with the win. If the Giants give up more than 4-runs in a game, they’re doomed. The average National League team this year scores about 4.52 runs per game, the Giants are at 3.85 per game. Only the Nationals and Padres — 3.71 and 3.83 — are worse. The Giants pitching has given up 4.74 runs per game this year, largely due to a weak bullpen that’s ranked dead last in ERA in the National League. In fact, the Giants bullpen has a WPA of -1.48 which places them next to last for bullpen WPA in the NL, once again, only Washington has had worse production from their ‘pen with a score of -2.38.

The Giants had the idea that they could scratch and claw and fight for games by doing the right things, but they lacked the run prevention abilities (defense and bullpen support) to actually get any traction. Oh well, lessons learned, we hope so at least. I think the Giants struggles also have shown that how hard it is to win regular season baseball in a modern era where scoring runs equal one half of the important equation of winning. The Giants’ run differential — how many runs scored versus how many runs allowed — is currently at -108. It’s not the worst differential but it does tell a tale.

Anyways, I’ll take the win, even if it was out-of-the-ordinary for this team. It was good to see Manny get on via a walk, steal 2nd, move to third on a flyball, and then run wildly home for the win.

Also of interest is that Matt Palmer probably bought himself another start or two with his outing yesterday. It wasn’t spectacular — he got a little walky in the 4th, issuing 3 walks in that inning — but he gave the Giants 6-innings of 2-run ball. That’s more than you can say for Zito some days. I would say that yesterday is probably Palmer’s ceiling in terms of effectiveness, he’ll get the occasional groundball, hang the occasional breaking pitch, and hopefully stick in the game long enough to eat innings.

Baggs ponders on the possibilities of Palmer’s pitching performance, wondering if it increases the chances of a 6-man rotation for the rest of the year?

If Palmer can continue to pitch well, the Giants will be more likely to consider a six-man rotation as a way of taking it easy on their younger starters. They only have two days off in September, with few chances to give guys an extra day. So that might not be a bad idea.

I’m assuming that a 6-man rotation includes Sanchez? His MRI results were encouraging but I would much rather err on the side of caution and just shut him down for the year. He has increased his workload by enough and I’m not seeing much to be gained by starting him any more this year. Take it easy on the lefty, Giants.

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Lowry Update: Lowry’s chances of pitching this year are “bleak” according to a SFGiants.com article. Lowry has still yet to throw off a mound and in a game scenario.

Lowry, the Giants’ leading winner in two of the previous three seasons, has been playing catch every other day for about a month.

“My arm is back to — I don’t want to say ‘normal,’ but with all the time [off], my arm’s had a chance to fully recover,” he said.

Lowry is hoping to play some Winterball to get his arm back in shape. Lowry’s status with the Giants is still very much up in the air. His last contract year with the club is in ‘09 and unless he wanted to come back on a incentive-laded value deal, I don’t think the Giants should consider Lowry. His health concerns are a definite roadblock and they won’t know how Lowry does in game situations until Winterball. Best of luck, Noah.

Comment Starter: True or False: Lowry will start 12 games or more for the Giants in ‘09.

Back to the blog after a short break. Fangraphs is one of my favorite baseball websites on the internet. It’s always been a great resource for people searching for more in depth baseball statistics. They’ve just recently added a feature where you can search by pitch type — type of pitch, speed, and percentage thrown — it’s another great tool to an already robust website.

Let’s take a look at some of the numbers by pitch type for the Giants starters last year — defined as anyone who threw at least 100 innings or more.

The Fastball

Out of the starters not only did Lincecum throw the fastest fastball on average — 94.2mph — but he also threw the highest percentage of fastballs — 66.9%. That’s some heat and a bunch of it.

Here’s how the rotation ranks by velocity: Lincecum (94.2mph), Cain (93.2mph), Correia (90.4mph), Lowry (86.7mph), and Zito (84.5mph).

Zito’s velocity continues to remind us of the days of Reuter. Cain and Correia broke the 90mph limit and Lowry worked in the upper 80’s. Pitchers throw harder today than ever before. The average fastball in today’s game is 91mph. Cain and Lincecum’s fastballs are above average, Correia’s fastball was right around average, and Lowry and Zito threw less than average heat.

When ranking by the percentage of fastballs thrown, the rotation shakes out as the following: Lincecum (66.9%), Correia (66.6%), Cain (64.5%), Zito (56.8%), and Lowry (52.6%).

I would imagine that if Correia threw a full season, his fastball percentage might lower some. The numbers on Cain are backed up by our PITCHf/x analysis of Cain in which we found that Cain likes to throw the heat and with good reason, it’s coming in at around 94mph.

The Changeup

From our group of starters, Zito threw the changeup the slowest — 73mph — and the most — 20.2%. Another reason that this new fangraph tool is just so cool, is that it tracks pitch types from ‘05 onward. So we can see if a pitcher starts to change how he pitches. Over the past two years Zito has begun to throw his changeup more. In 2005 he threw it 14.1% of the time and in 2006 and 2007 he threw it 19.1% and 20.2% of the time. I think it’s entirely possible that Zito started to lose velocity sometime between the 2005 and 2006 season and as a result, he started to throw his changeup more in an effort to give batters another pitch to think about.

Here’s how the starters break down when looking at the average velocity of their changeups: Zito (73mph), Lowry (75.7mph), Correia (83mph), Lincecum (84.4mph), and Cain (86.5mph).

Lowry still throws his changeup quite slow and gets almost 10 miles of separation between his change and fastball. Lincecum is throwing his changeup just as fast as Zito is throwing his fastball! He’s also getting a great separation between his fastball and changeup. I was really impressed with the way that Lincecum worked in his change last year, a pitch that was rarely credited to him as a plus pitch. I think he’s got a really good change to improve on it even more this year. Cain was throwing his change up almost 2 miles faster than Zito was throwing his heat.

And here is the percentage of changeups thrown by the rotation: Zito (20.2%), Lowry (18.7%), Lincecum (13.5%), Correia (11.9%), and Cain (10.4%)

Has Lowry lost the feel for his changeup? The numbers think so. He’s throwing it less and less each year since his breakout 2005 season. Here’s the numbers on his changeup from’05-’07: 26.8%, 22.7%, 18.7%. He’s dropped almost 4% on the pitch each year.

The Curveball

Tim Lincecum threw the curve the most and he threw it hard. Lincecum threw his curve 19.7% of the time and at a speed of 80.6mph. Tim’s hard breaking power curve is one of his signature pitches. Zito’s curve is totally different but a pitch that he’s been know for since he came into the game. Zito’s curve is slower and has a bigger break. Zito threw his curve second to Tim at 18.7% but much slower at 70.4mph which gives it that big downward break.

Velocity of curveballs by Giants starters: Lincecum (80.6mph), Cain (75.8mph), Correia (75.7mph), Lowry (72.5mph), and Zito (70.4mph).

An interesting fact about the curveballs of Zito and Lincecum is that Zito’s curve was one of the slowest in the game for starting pitchers — only Vicente Padilla, Tom Glavine, Jamie Moyer, Micah Owings, David Wells, Doug Davis, Justin Germano, Orlando Hernandez, Randy Wolf, Livan Hernandez, and Tim Wakefield threw slower curves than Zito — and Lincecum’s was one of the fastest — only Felix Hernandez, AJ Burnett, and Dustin McGowan threw harder curveballs than Lincecum. Thats a pretty amazing divide between two curveballs on the same staff.

Percentage of curveballs thrown by Giants starters: Lincecum (19.7%), Zito (18.7%), Cain (8.7%), Lowry (5.1%) and Correia (0.4%).

Lincecum and Zito were the only Giants starters in double digits for curveballs thrown and Correia practically never threw a curve with only 0.4% of his pitches being a curveball.

The Slider

Matt Cain threw the hardest slider on average from our group of starters with an average velocity of 85.7mph. The slider was a good pitch for Cain in 2007, something we learned in his PITCHf/x article. Tim Lincecum didn’t throw a single slider in ‘07 but it’s a pitch that he’s been reportedly working on for the ‘08 season.

Lowry threw the most sliders at 23.6% which is something that we also discovered in his PITCHf/x article. At the time I thought that Josh Kalk’s algorithms might have been lumping Lowry’s curves with his sliders to incorrectly pad his slider numbers, but the Fangraphs data backs up the fact that Noah just threw more sliders in 2007. Way more than he’s ever thrown before in a season.

Check out the slider percentage for Lowry from ‘05-’07: 13%, 5.2%, 23.6%. That’s a big jump. Whereas Lowry threw his curve more in ‘06 but scrapped it in favor for the slider in ‘07.

Velocity of sliders thrown by Giants starters: Cain (85.7mph), Correia (85.1mph), Lowry (80mph), Zito (77.8mph), Lincecum (0mph).

Cain and Correia both threw a hard slider. Zito threw one of the slower sliders in the game. Only 8 starting pitchers — Andy Sonnanstine, Livan Hernandez, Chuck James, Chris Capuano, Jarrod Washburn, Mike Bacsik, Bronson Arroyo, and Orlando Hernandez — threw slower sliders than Zito’s 77.8mph slider. A good chunk of the list includes junk-ballers like Livan Hernandez, Orlando Hernandez, and Bronson Arroyo.

Percentage of sliders thrown by Giants starters: Lowry (23.6%), Correia (20.6%), Cain (16.5%), Zito (4.3%), and Lincecum (0%).

Correia has always been a fastball / slider pitcher, especially when working in the bullpen, so it’s not surprising to see him throwing sliders in the 20% range. I think it’s possible that we could see Matt Cain throw even more sliders in ‘08.

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I’ll post some numbers on the Giants bullpen within the next week.

Minor League News: The Giants have optioned G-Rod and Pat Misch to AAA Fresno. G-Rod was a potential backup catcher but he had a horrible Spring going 2-17. Eliezer Alfonzo didn’t impress anyone either but the Giants might like his offense better than G-Rod’s. Somewhat surprising since G-Rod is the better defender of the two and I thought that the team might go with defense. But, the Giants have much, much, bigger problems than who wins a backup catchers job.

Misch will probably go into the AAA rotation and start. He should be called up if the Giants make a trade that involves a starter or if an injury strikes. Misch has relieved before in the minors and majors so he might also get a look at that role at some point in time.

With the news that Noah Lowry will miss some time to begin the year with what’s been diagnosed as ‘exertional compartmental syndrome’ in his forearm, his PITCHf/x article might seem a little late. The good news is that Lowry can point to an actual physical condition that hindered him in pitching a baseball. That might sound a little weird but it’s comforting to know that it wasn’t mental such as the roadblocks that ended Steve Blass’s and Rick Ankiel’s career on the pitchers mound. Also, the procedure is considered minor and Lowry could be back by sometime in May.

There are some downsides with the situation. It’s the third injury that Lowry has dealt with in the past three years. It looks like he’s gong to be a longshot to ever throw 200 innings in a season again. He’s young, but not that young at 27, and what you see with Lowry is probably what you’re going to get. It’s also going to really devalue Lowry even further, making it impossible to trade him until the trading deadline this season, at the earliest. Even if Lowry comes back on time for his surgery, teams will still most likely be cautious when looking at him in a trade.

Now that Lowry is out for at least a month or so, it changes the landscape of the 5th starter competition. Correia is now a lock for the rotation, with the new 5th spot going to either Jonathan Sanchez or Pat Misch. Both are lefties that have pitched decently this Spring. My preference is Sanchez by far but Misch is a little interesting as a starting option.

Today’s article is the next in a line of using PITCHf/x data to analyze the starting pitching from 2007. So far we’ve covered Barry Zito and Matt Cain. Today’s piece takes a gander at Noah Lowry. Lowry led the team in wins in 2007 but once again ran into some injury troubles late in the season, missing the last month with forearm problems. Lowry truly had one of those weird seasons in ‘07, he walked a bunch of guys, didn’t strike out many hitters, and generally was the benefactor of some very good luck. Still, many fans cling onto the memories of the 2005 version of Noah Lowry and not the more recent injured and declining peripherals version.

Let’s take a look at some of the data from Lowry’s ‘07 season to try and better understand what he was doing, and whether or not he was doing it well.

The Basics

To start let’s check out Lowry’s break plot.

First a preface. Because of the limited amount of PITCHf/x data available, some of Lowry’s numbers are a little funky, mostly from a small sample size respect. Because PITCHf/x isn’t installed in every stadium it doesn’t track every pitch that a pitcher throws, it probably tracked around 1/4th of the total amount of pitches thrown last year. In Lowry’s sample you can see it recorded that Lowry threw only 15 curveballs in 850 total pitches recorded. You can see that the slider and curveball “blobs” run very close in the same area, there wasn’t a huge separation, breakwise, between the two pitches. Because I’ve been using Josh Kalk’s great PITCHf/x tool, I haven’t been manually pulling out the data from ‘07, thus it’s very possible that Kalk’s algorithms — used to classify what a pitch generally is, based on it’s break and velocity — may have lumped some of Lowry’s sliders with his curveballs and vice versa. It also doesn’t help that Lowry missed the last month of the season, which would have added even more data into his PITCHf/x numbers.

Understand that from here on, the curveball numbers aren’t good because only 15 were tracked. It’s best to just “lump” Lowry’s curveballs and sliders into one pitch, and just imagine it as a breaking pitch. I still kept them separate for this article but combining them when you look at the charts is helpful.

Lowry got the most break, vertically, with his “breaking pitches” — either sliders or curves — than any of this other pitches. That’s not shocking because, well, breaking pitches, um, break! And his other two offerings of fastball and slider have less vertical break. The fastball and change grouping overlap and don’t break vertically as much as Lowry’s slider or curve.

His breaking stuff runs into a RHB and his changeups and fastballs run away from a RHB.

Here’s the initial speed on Lowry’s 4 pitches that he threw, and how many he threw on them when tracked by PITCHf/x

TYPE	    INITIAL SPEED (MPH)     NUMBER THROWN
Fastball         87.72		        428
Curve            70.84                  15
Slider           81.44                  246
Change           76.04                  161

Like I stated above, you can see that not many curveballs were tracked, leading to some sample size issues. Lowry’s fastball, on average, topped out right below 88mph. The next most thrown pitch was his “breaking stuff” of the slider and curve. His breaking stuff was right around 80mph. Next was Lowry’s changeup which he threw 161 times and on average at around 76mph. I know that when I watched Lowry in ‘07 I thought he was throwing his curveball/slider way more than the changeup and from this data set, it looks to be true. It looks like Lowry may have moved off the change some. Maybe because of injury or that he’s lost the feel for the pitch, but I’d bet that if we had his data from 2005, he was throwing the change way more. He’s getting a good speed separation between the changeup and the fastball. The change is about 11mph slower which is a nice bit of separation between the two.

Next, lets take a look at what pitches produced the highest strikes swinging percentage for Noah Lowry in ‘07.

TYPE	    STRIKES SWINGING%
Fastball	  2.3%
Curve             6.6%
Slider            7.3%
Change           12.4%

Lowry got the most strikes swinging on the pitch he threw the least, his changeup. From looking at PITCHf/x data, fastballs rarely generated a lot of swing throughs but 2.3% is a pretty low percentage for strikes swinging. For comparison, Zito was getting a 4.5% on strikes swinging. Matt Cain was in the 7% range. Lowry threw the pitch that got the least amount of swing throughs the most and threw the pitch that got the most amount of swing throughs the least. Lowry’s breaking stuff was getting swing throughs in the 7% range. From looking at this, if I was Lowry’s pitching coach, I might try to convince him to bring back the change a little more. It was a good pitch for Lowry in ‘07 when looking at when a batter swung and missed.

Now let’s take a look at Lowry’s pitch type on a per count situation.

Again, remember that the curveball wasn’t tracked very much, so it’s mostly between the fastball, change, and slider. In the same small sample size vein, Lowry threw only 12 pitches in the 3-0 count, all 12 of them fastballs. It’s believable that he would be more likely to throw the fastball in a 3-0, but not 100% of the time.

What I found interesting was that in most counts, Lowry divided up his pitches almost equally. Take for example the 0-2 count. He threw a fastball 40.48% of the time, a breaking pitch — defined as a slider or curve — 35.71% of the time, and a changeup 23.81% of the time. From the appearance of the graph, Lowry threw the fastball the most, but he mixed his other pitches in. In every count with 2 strikes, except for the full count, Lowry was most likely to throw the fastball. In the full count, he threw his breaking pitches — curve or slider — slightly more.

Let’s examine how Lowry pitched to RHB’s and LHB’s.

He threw the fastball equally to both RHB’s and LHB’s. He threw the slider the most to LHB’s, the slider should break down and away from a LHB. Lowry used his changeup against RHB’s, which should naturally fade away from a RHB. Nothing too surprising here. Once again we can see that Lowry threw the fastball a lot in ‘07. And once again we can see that the curveball sample is really small.

While I was looking at Lowry’s pitch types by count, I was theorizing that he should throw either his breaking stuff or changeup more in 2-strike counts, because both pitches got more swing throughs than his fastball. His fastball had a very low percentage of 2.3% in swing throughs. But, there are other ways to get strikes, strikes looking for one, are another way to get a strikeout on a hitter in a 2-strike count. Let’s examine the following graph to see if Lowry should alter the way he pitches in certain counts to hitters.

In the following graph, 4 outcomes are included. Balls, Strikes Swinging, Strikes Looking, and Foul/Tips.

First, you can see that Lowry really struggled with his control in ‘07, especially with his fastball and changeup. When Lowry threw a fastball, it was a ball 41.35% of the time. In my Zito PITCHf/x article I noted that command of the fastball is very important not only for Barry Zito, but for all pitchers. It helps set up everything else they’ve got. For comparison, Zito threw his fastball for a ball 42.7% of the time, very close to Lowry’s 41.35% ball rate with the heater. Both lefties struggled to throw their fastball for strikes consistently. Lowry also had trouble throwing the changeup for strikes, throwing it a ball 44.09% of the time.

I was surprised to see such a high amount of strikes looking on Lowry’s fastball. The fastball and slider both got almost the same amount of strikes looking at around 20-21%. The changeup got the least amount of strikes looking at 6.2%. It’s possible that batters are still looking for Lowry’s very-good changeup and either hacking it foul or hitting it in play. The changeup did get the most strikes swinging at 12.4%, when batters took a swing a Lowry’s change they were more likely to swing-and-miss than any of his other pitches.

Wrapping Things Up

Ignoring Lowry’s injury problems, he would really benefit by regaining some control on his fastball. Like Zito, Lowry missed a lot with his fastball and considering that he threw the fastball the most, it probably hurt him the most. It’s very possible that Lowry’s deterioration of control is a byproduct of his injuries over the past few years — especially in the Spring when he couldn’t feel the ball in his hand.

I found it interesting that Lowry seemed to throw all of his pitches in most of the various counts. He never clearly shifted to one pitch in one hitting count. Unlike Matt Cain’s “Here it is, hit it” approach when Cain threw almost exclusively his fastball no matter what the count. Lowry seemed resigned to the fact that if the hitter didn’t chase his pitch, or if he couldn’t throw it for a strike, he would be OK with the walk. This is an approach that Tom Glavine has used over the years. I’m not saying Lowry has near Glavine’s stuff, or command, but it’s the same mentality. This could potentially explain part of Lowry’s huge jump in his walk rate in ‘07.

I also think Lowry would benefit from throwing his slider/curve more in counts when he needs a strikeout. Lowry had the best command of his slider/curve and it also generated a good bit of strikes looking and the second most strikes swinging. I believe that Lowry threw his fastball too much. If Lowry can regain his command on the fastball it might be more attractive for him to throw it in counts where he needs a strikeout.

Luck also played a big role in Lowry’s ‘07. He posted a career HR/9 rate and out pitched his FIP by almost a full run. I’ve posted again and again why I’m not sold on Lowry’s future continued success. His loss of control and ability to strikeout hitters don’t inspire me with confidence. Once Lowry comes back from his surgery, a telling question should be answered. Was his tendinitis injury something that he’s been playing with for the last year or so? And once he comes back, will he regain any control? I think the true nature of his health will be huge on his future. There’s just so many questions about his health that we can’t really know about unless we’re Noah Lowry or the team doctor. Like, how long have you been pitching with a wrist issue? How’s your oblique been since ‘06? How is the forearm feeling? Did an injury cause your control problems last year?

I’ll be very interested in watching Lowry when he comes back from his procedure. I have a hard time banking on a pitcher with three years of falling peripherals and injury concerns but I wish Lowry the best.

On Deck: An analysis of Tim Lincecum’s 2007 season using PITCHf/x.

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.