The Enigma of Jeremy Sowers
by odradek on Jul 9, 2008 7:26 PM EDT
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I root for Jeremy Sowers. Like a lot of people, I want him to succeed, to be an exception to those who say he doesn’t miss enough bats to make it in the bigs. This year his K rate has gone up. He seems to have regained the arm strength he lost after he was shut down early in 2006. But, man, has he been lousy on the mound since 2006. In four of his eight starts this season Sowers has given up nine hits or more. Batters hit .356 when Jeremy pitches. His WHIP is 1.86 (the major league average is 1.38). Lefties are 15 for 42 against him in eight starts, OPSing 1.106. With RISP and two outs batters OPS 1.219 (going 8 for 21). His pitch-per-inning rate has gone up since 2006. In that season he was getting groundball outs (a 1.54 G/F rate). Last year he was about even, and this year he is right about league average for inducing ground balls. Some of this is sample size and who he has faced. The Tigers, who kill lefties, love to see him. In 9.2 innings at Comerica he’s given up 17 hits. Miguel Cabrera is four for five against him. Sowers had an incredible year in 2006, but his career numbers aren’t good: 196 innings, 232 hits, 30 homers, 53 walks and 77 strikeouts for a 5.42 ERA. He often seems a pitch away from getting out of a jam, and can’t get the out. He doesn’t seem to nibble so much this season. He has great minor league numbers. What gives with this guy?
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I’m amazed that you’d take the trouble to slice-and-dice what’s already a relatively small sample, yet never once do you bring up BABIP.
When you show his lousy numbers with two outs and RISP, you’re not showing how bad he is, you’re showing how bad his timing has been, giving up so many more extra-base hits in those situations than in other, more low-leverage spots.
His BABIP is .356 versus league average .296.
I didn’t cite two-out figures to indicate how bad he is. Just as another oddity in a set of bizarre stats.
Ah.
Well, his BABIP with two outs and RISP is .385, which is pretty rough luck.
Then again, allowing 3 HR in those 22 PA isn’t exactly helping matters.
He’s not really walking that many guys.
He’s not walking many guys, but he’s been falling behind on almost every hitter for about the past few months. Then again when he tries super hard to get ahead in the count with a meatball down the middle of the plate he seems to suck too. Find that happy medium, Jer. Do it.
by supermarioelia on Jul 10, 2008 9:17 AM EDT up reply actions
We were discussing hard hit balls percentage about Marte yesterday. I’d be curious to see what it is against Jeremy, and I suspect may be a contributing factor to his BaBIP numbers
Well according to his numbers over at THT Sowers his getting hit hard. His LD% is 26.5%. His BAbip should be high because he is giving up more well hit balls. He’s not really pitching all that well other than not walking guys. You can also read into his HR/FB rate and see that the abnormally high 21.7% and can infer that its not all park related, rather well hit fly balls/fliners. So I think Jay’s point about BAbip being “rough luck” is a little misleading, when you give up as many linedrive hits as Sowers has your BAbip should be higher than normal.
There was an article over at THT awhile back about fastball velocity and specifically how a pitcher with relatively low velocity (sowers for example) can live on the outside part of the plate an be succesful, but will get hammered more often coming inside than a pitcher who could amp it up there in the mid 90s.
I’m tempted to say that it does look more and more like Sowers is going to have to find a way to add a little velocity, while maintaining control, if he wants to have success in Cleveland. But if you look at this velocity numbers, he’s throwing as hard as he ever has in the bigs (89mph fastball on average), with as much separation between his primary pitches as he has ever had (89-82-79). His control isn’t terrible (although it could be better), but he’s just getting hammered with HRs. It’d be nice if Carmona or Laffey or Westbrook could help him get a little more downward action on his fastball.
I heard a discussion today about Betancourt drawing a distinction between control (balls vs. strikes) and command (where in the strike zone do the pitches go). Seems the same could be said for Sowers; even if he’s not walking guys, he’s sure leaving the ball up and over the plate. Here’s his last start:
That’s a whole lot of blue in places where a soft-tossing lefty has no business hanging out.
I don’t know, though. Here is the same chart for Byrd’s start last night. Byrd definitely has control, and presumably has command otherwise he wouldn’t still be in the bigs. And last night was a good start.
It’s odd. With Sowers’s I see a vase, but with Byrd’s I see two faces.
"Lotta heart in Cleveland." - Ian Hunter
by Denver Tribe Fan on Jul 11, 2008 12:18 PM EDT up reply actions 4 recs
And here’s the chart for Greg Maddux’s best start this season:
If you can tell the difference, you’re doing better than I am.
Far fewer pitches, higher percentage in the strike zone, might be a slightly greater frequency (relatively speaking) down in the zone. I don’t know what the colors represent, but “green” pitches for Maddux were basically down and in to righties and some were in the strike zone. For Byrd, more likely to be away (and up), for Sowers all over the place.
In the end, I suspect your implying the right thing though—it’s not just about location, but about things like movement, sequences, and the like.
Some of his homeruns could be park related. He’s pitched in only five parks this year, including the three most unfriendly parks for pitchers: In a combined 14 innings, he’s given up two HRs in Great America, one in Coors, two at U.S. Cellular Field. But he’s also given up three in Comerica against the Tigers, who hurt LHPs.
My inkling is that Greg Maddux gets more movement on his pitches than Sowers does even if the location is similar and neither throws very hard. If you watch Maddux from behind the pitcher’s mound, he tends to throw a cutter that comes back toward a right-handed batter making it more difficult for the batter to get the sweet spot of the bat on the ball. Sowers does not have near the amount of break on his fastball or offspeed pitches
I’m not entirely sure what this is telling me, but it appears that they basically have similar movement but in opposite directions
I’m not too sure about the scale and how that corresponds with feet, it looks like Maddux had a bunch of cans of corn, whereas Sowers is trending toward the warning path.
In the same thought I would think a good Westbrook or Fausto start would have the data bunched in the bottom left-hand side.
Not sure if that’s correct but that’s my guess.
Wedge: [letting go of Casey's hand] I'll never let go, Casey. I promise.
Some of his homeruns could be park related. He’s pitched in only five parks this year, including the three most unfriendly parks for pitchers: In a combined 14 innings, he’s given up two HRs in Great America, one in Coors, two at U.S. Cellular Field. But he’s also given up three in Comerica against the Tigers, who hurt LHPs.
It is strange. His stuff is so much better than it was last year. As with a lot of pitchers, with Lee being Exhibit A, fastball command is key. Lee’s fastball command made his other pitches better, and that would really help Sowers, as his off-speed stuff is barely average.
Lee has better stuff (and in no way am I saying that Sowers could do what Lee is doing) but even if Sowers never is as good as he was in ‘06, you have to believe that he can be much better than he is now. Hopefully we’ll see some of that the rest of the year and they can pencil him in the rotation for ‘09.
Dude needs to shave his head, grow a soul patch and dye it red.
by odradek on Jul 10, 2008 11:18 PM EDT reply actions 2 recs
Lie the enigma?
Wasn’t there a character on late-period SeaQuest that resembled this guy?
by fleerdon on Jul 11, 2008 10:56 AM EDT up reply actions
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Nicely done. Can’t go wrong with a SeaQuest reference.
by fleerdon on Jul 11, 2008 2:36 PM EDT up reply actions
A fan by the moniker Bluto1999 writes the following comment on cleveland.com:
“Unless Sowers throws a masterpiece Sunday (0-5 record), era over 7.00, they better send him down quick. That 150 pound shrimp isn’t fooling anybody with his cute stuff, and his fastball doesn’t exist.”
Get the horn implants, Jeremy.
If the Indians braintrust merely implemented the exact opposite of the suggestions on cleveland.com, they’d increase their win total by a material amount each year.
by FredOx on Jul 14, 2008 12:09 PM EDT reply actions 1 recs
He’s not an enigma. People (or teams) who get lucky and then regress to their garbage mean do not have enigmatic characteristics. Just ask Zach Duke or the 2007 Seattle Mariners.
Garbage mean? What the hell are you even talking about?
The mystery with Sowers is how great the gap is between his Triple-A and major league performance this season (and overall).
BP’s translations indicate that Sowers was pitching in Triple-A at the equivalent of a 4.46 ERA - slightly above-average - and that translation very much is taking his iffy peripherals into consideration. Other translations show him as low as 3.02.
If he’s pitching at his mean, he shouldn’t be amazing, but he should at least be decent.
There’s this assumption that Sowers was marginal in the minors, caught lighting in a bottle for part of a season, then became marginal again. It’s an assumption unsupported by any actual facts. I’m not sure I’d hold Zach Duke up as an example of regressing to his garbage mean, either. In 474 minor league innings, he had a career ERA of 2.37, WHIP of 1.10, K/9 of 7.14 and BB/9 of 2.34. He had good numbers in AA at age 21 and good numbers in AAA at age 22. He had one great MLB season and three at slightly less than league average. He’s a good example of something, but not that which he’s held out to be here.
The 2007 Mariners I’ll accept.
Sowers’ minor league numbers are good, but there’s also his first year in the majors: 88.3 innings—almost half a season—of exceptional pitching. Fourteen starts, including two complete game shutouts. He was a very good major-league pitcher in 2006.
Even in the minors, Sowers’s strikeout rates were scary low, and he didn’t get enough grounders to make up for the lost Ks.
What I’m most curious about is why his strikeout rates were so low in triple-A. Obviously, he’s not going to blow people away, but if we look at his 2005 season, we see:
9.46 K/9 in high-A
7.65 K/9 in double-A
Then in 2006, in triple-A he only struck out 4.99 per nine. Did anything change or was he simply not yet good enough for triple-A?
I take heart in the fact that his K rate was up this year in triple-A (as compared to his first two stints in Buffalo), and he’s struck out 26 in 43 major league innings. He’s still getting hit awfully hard, but that K rate suggests that he can and will improve in the future.
by Peter Bendix on Jul 15, 2008 12:47 PM EDT up reply actions
I disagree.
I think we’re seeing an improved K-rate at the expense of walks and hard hit balls. Sowers couldn’t survive in his old mold but he can’t survive this way either. My feeling is that he’s reaching for more velocity and as a result losing control/command resulting in his bad results.
I just don’t see how he’s going to live as a major league pitcher. When he has good command, he puts too many balls in play. When he ups his strikeouts, he has too many walks, HRs, and hard hit balls. There’s no reason to think he’s going to learn control/command at this increased K-rate.
There might be a tiny area he can live in, where he gets all these ratios just right, but I don’t see it. His stuff and control isn’t good enough.
Obviously, I’m a pessimist but that’s sort of been my thing with Sowers all along. I look at him and say “huh? how is this going to work again?”
once again, steroids is the answer to all of our problems. i say get him and hafner on a program and just live with the suspensions. would their increased production while they play balance out when they’re not? it would allow for some roster flexibility, too. it’s a possible new market inefficiency i’d like to investigate with these guys.
I don’t see how an increased strikeout rate would also lead to more hard hit balls.
I do see your point that he could be pitching away from contact, leading to an increase in both Ks and BBs. But I’d take this trade-off: I don’t think Sowers can control his balls in play, and therefore, the more Ks, the better.
Sowers’s BABIP is .356. Of course, he’s been hit very hard too, but I expect (hope?) this to regress towards the mean. I do think there is an area where he strikes out juuuuust enough to get by. Unfortunately, it appears that that’s his ceiling – a poor man’s Paul Byrd. Yuck.
by Peter Bendix on Jul 15, 2008 2:23 PM EDT up reply actions
It’d be interesting to look at Sowers pitch/Fx data over the course of the season. I wonder if as he has added velocity, whether or not he has lost movement in addition to control. I’d rather have Sowers throwing 89 with control and movement, than 92 with neither. We need someone to put together the numbers like they did over at BrewcrewBall for Dave Bush.
If the judgement is that he is throwing harder and losing control based his last game, i think its very important to consider who was umpiring the game behind the plate and the impact the small strike zone (in regards to the outside corner) had on Sowers performance. In my opinion he was hitting the outside corner with 91 MPH fastballs (an improvement from his past efforts of 87-89 MPH) and was simply not getting the calls. Wedge was thrown out I believe for arguing these calls.
Good Sowers didn’t get strikeouts because he induced tons of weak contact. Bad Sowers gets strikeouts by challenging hitters, which he’s doing by catching way more of the plate. While hitters sometimes swing and miss or watch these pitches go by, when they hit them they hit them hard.
To put another way, Good Sowers throws things that look delectable but are actually bad tasting. Bad Sowers throws things that look delectable and ar delectable.
On top of all this, he still walks batters. Argh.
I agree with you, Andrew, but I don’t think the outlook is quite as dire. I also think the loss of control is a result of adjustments he’s making to get more velocity (which he has been doing). I think the velocity will continue to result in more Ks. I think that with time he’ll get more comfortable with the new mechanics (or whatever he’s done to increase his speed) and he’ll get some of his command back. I think how successful he is will ultimately be determined in large part by how good his control can be while maintaining fastball velocity in the 89-92 range.
I agree with this, I think Andrew is jumping to a conclusion when he states, “There’s no reason to think he’s going to learn control/command at this increased K-rate”. Why is there no reason? I think if anything adaptation rather than stagnation is more likely considering Sowers age and the quality of coaching available to him from the AAA and ML coaching staffs.
It’s not impossible and I am probably jumping to conclusions; but, that’s what a lot of this is about right? Of course the correct answer is “well, wait and see.” But then we’d have nothing to talk about.
My thing is this:
Sowers is 25 years old and has added for the first time in his life, as far as I know, 3-4 mph to his fastball. There’s a reason he wasn’t throwing that hard before, even long after he’d been in the Indians system. My assumption is that the reason is that he and coaches both knew that an increase in velocity made him a less viable pitcher; increasing his velocity led to him losing control.
The whole reason they’re doing ti now is because it’s become clear that what they had defined as the “most viable Sowers” clearly wasn’t viable at all at either AAA or the big leagues over the last 18 months. So, they’re going to plan B and seeing if they can figure this out on the fly, a last ditch to try to save Sowers’ career. I’m not optimistic about the chances. We hate when CC (formerly) or Fausto add a few mph to their pitches-it’s assumed they get worse, no argument. Why is it such a great thing when Sowers does it? Just because he didn’t throw hard to start with? His pitches are straightening out and he’s losing command and control, just like, ya know, good pitchers.
To put more succinctly, if he can throw this hard and hit spots, why the hell wasn’t he doing it before? Did the Indians just figure out a way to add velocity and keep everything else? That seems unlikely.
What I can’t explain is his AAA stats this year.
It’s called a jump to conclusions mat. You see, it would be this mat that you would put on the floor… and would have different CONCLUSIONS written on it that you could JUMP TO.
That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard in my life, Brick
Yes, this is horrible, this idea..
-Erik
I think there needs to be a stark line drawn between the idea that CC or Fausto adding a few mph to their pitches is a bad thing therefor if Sowers has done so it also would be a bad thing (i.e. at the expense of control). When CC or Fausto or any pitcher for that matter tries to throw harder at a specific point in a game the extra exertion causes changes in the mechanics and you have a loss of control, which is bad. I think Sowers may have had his velocity develop in the past year from a change in mechanics (which I’ll discuss below) or physical development (I believe the velocity of a fastball peaks around age 27-29 for pitchers and then declines), which in either case, shouldn’t be resulting in extra exersion, rather simliar level of exertion and simply more efficency or ability effecting the outcome (increased velocity), and minimal or no loss of control.
Your point about, if they knew how to improve velocity before, they must have chose not to make those changes for the reason that they knew it would cause a loss of control. First off, if Sowers developed this increase in velocity through physical growth alone, then it has nothing to do with mechanics and coaching. Now if its all about mechanics it is important to remember that in his first year in the Indians system he jumped from Kinston (A+), to Akron (AA), and then to Buffalo (AAA). Thats three different teams and three different coaching staffs. There wasn’t time to work on mechanics, and since he was having success, there wasn’t a need. Then he splits time in Buffalo and Cleveland at age 23 and continues to have success (although it was largely predicated on luck in the Majors), so there again they don’t mess with something that seems to be working. Then at 24 he has a terrible year in Cleveland and is demoted…and aha! they get a chance to really work on his mechanics in the minors (plus a little more physical development) and towards the end of the AAA season he had started to up his K/9 rate and reports were that he increased his velocity a few MPH. Now we see what he did this year in AAA with the increased velocity, increasing his K/9 (around 6.4 or so) and keeping a good BB/9 ( 2.5) and low HR/9 (0.59). His performance in Cleveland is bad luck and simply poor pitching (LD% and baBIP) and a SSS. Give him the rest of the year and we’ll see how he does, I don’t think he’s going to have a LD% at 27.8 all season, as that drops you’ll see his baBIP drop.
Actually, believe it or not, pure stuff peaks tends to peak around 23 or 24.
To answer Andrew’s question, rising velocity is a good thing and not a bad thing when it’s a result of real improved arm strength, and not just “throwing harder.” Improved arm strength can come through natural physiological development (in the early 20’s) or through improved conditioning — in Sowers’ case, it was the conditioning. From Indians.com:
“He handled everything about as good as you can handle a situation like that,” manager Eric Wedge said. “He went down and improved tremendously. He worked hard to be the pitcher we feel he can be.”But the 24-year-old Sowers still has more work to do. Namely, he has to build up his arm strength to better handle the rigors of a full big league season.
“This offseason, I have to take a more aggressive approach,” Sowers said. “I can’t be afraid to long toss or anything like that. I have to air it out a little more.”
Wedge believes Sowers’ troubles this season were the result of big league batters adjusting to the stuff he had dominated with in the second half of ‘06, and Sowers’ inability to adjust back.
At Buffalo, Sowers worked on being more effective with his fastball. Thanks to some conditioning drills, he saw his velocity inch up a tad.
“I did a couple drills aimed at getting my arm speed back up,” he said. “You have to believe in yourself and pitch with more assertiveness.”
Even beyond that, we see a delicate balance between aggression and accuracy in both hitting and pitching, and in either case, the trick is to find the balance point at which each individual player is most productive overall. In Sowers’ case, if pure control isn’t getting it done, he may have to risk a little wildness to make himself less hittable. It’s unlikely a gambit like that would ever work for a pitcher, but if nothing else is working, it wouldn’t be totally nutty to try it.
For the record, though, I don’t think that’s what Sowers is doing. I do think he simply improved his arm strength and is trying to learn to attack each hitter more aggressively. You know, major league hitters face pitching at 92-97 mph every day. It isn’t necessarily any easier to hit a guy at 87 than at 91 — outside of extreme fastballs, movement and timing are going to be more important than simply being able to catch up.
And a more recent reference:
Sowers started last year in the Indians rotation, but was sent to Buffalo in June and didn’t make it back until September. He impressed the Indians this spring with his improved arm strength to go along with his trademark location.“He’s not the same guy,” said Wedge. “What he’s gone through. The adjustments he’s made. Some of the things he’s learned about himself. I think he’s better for it.”
I have to give you credit that you are at least upfront about your pessimistic outlook for Sowers, I’m thinking that it might bias your assessment of him though. In any case, I think he’s going to have to improve his pitching through the end of the season if he is going to be a viable option for us for next season and not simply a depth starter in AAA at age 26.
Yeah I recall your mentioning about “stuff” developing at 24. More or less pitchers don’t make huge jumps forward after that, but I recalled this article over at THT that discusses a study using Pitch f/x data from ‘07/’08 where the findings indicated that fastball velocity continued to develop up to age 29(admittedly to only about 1.5 MPH faster at age 29 than 24 on avg.). The study is a typical cross-sectional study, where as I would think a longitudinal study would probably be a better way at studying the development of velocity. So typical cross-sectional confounds are present and reported by the author.
There wasn’t time to work on mechanics, and since he was having success, there wasn’t a need.
If this was truly the Indians’ thought proces then I think there’s a huge problem. His BABIP in 2006 was obscenely low. Why would they think that was sustainable? Why would they think they needed to get him to the majors in a lost season?
9.46 K/9 in high-A ... 7.65 K/9 in double-A ... Then in 2006, in triple-A he only struck out 4.99 per nine. Did anything change or was he simply not yet good enough for triple-A?
I’ve always assumed that he wasn’t yet good enough. Note that he spent almost no time at any one level before being demoted. I’d have bet good money that had he not been promoted after two months in Triple-A, they would have had him working on his K rates, teaching him that he’s got to “dominate differently” in the minors if he wants to make it in the majors. I think it’s likely his continued development was derailed by a quick promotion to and quick (but unsustainable) success in the majors — not unlike Asdrubal, by the way.
I very much agree with you about Sowers’s quick promotion (and subsequent success) derailing his development. His peripherals at triple-A didn’t suggest major league dominance (or even adequacy), and much (all?) of his luck at the major league level could be traced to luck.
I disagree about Asdrubal, mostly because I believe he was getting extremely unlucky this season. His numbers from this year and last year are starkly similar – he had 186 plate appearances last year, and 185 this year. I’d say that nothing changed about his skill set: he saw the same amount of pitches this year, struck out 11 more times but walked 4 more times, hit the same percentage of ground balls, and almost the exact same percentage of line drives.
The difference for Asdrubal is that last year his BABIP was ..323 (his eBABIP was .317), and this year his BABIP is .237 (despite his eBABIP being .326).
Asdrubal’s poor season is the result, perhaps entirely, of bad luck.
Sorry to digress from the main point about Mr Sowers.
by Peter Bendix on Jul 16, 2008 1:02 PM EDT up reply actions
How much of that BABIP difference is luck, and how much is other teams being able to position their fielders better based on film and scouting?
Free Andy Marte!
by woodsmeister on Jul 16, 2008 3:54 PM EDT up reply actions
I remember reading somewhere that the Indians say his diminished fastball last season was the result of his being shut down early in 2006. The Indians didn’t want to overwork him that season, but didn’t anticipate that the long rest would result in his arm being weaker in 2007.
What are we really talking about when we say “arm strength?” I thought that most of the velocity came from the trunk (hips, butt and back.) The arm basically just transfers it to the ball.
by ganatz on Jul 15, 2008 6:54 PM EDT up reply actions
I don’t think you’re remembering it quite right, but I didn’t find anything directly to contradict it.
My recollection is that Sowers said that he’d deliberately taken it easy on his conditioning in the 2006-2007 offseason, figuring that he didn’t want to wear himself out, anticipating a longer grind for the 2007 season. That doesn’t make any real sense, but that’s what I remember him saying about it.
Tony Lastoria had something on this back in 2006. Heaven forbid the Plain Dealer sports articles should be accessible.
All in all, just an absolutely horrendous draft pick by Shapiro. I mean the more I think about it, the worse it hurts. Number 6? Really?
i’m going to have to disagree with you pretty strongly here. Sowers was drafted in 2004 just as Cleveland was beginning to put together a decent core of talent. Sowers was able to join that core by making it to the bigs in just his second pro season, an incredibly short development time, and going 7-4 with the big league club down the stretch. Yes…2007 was a very disappointing season marked by lost velocity. Again, what do you hope for someone who stumbles in development?...a nice recovery. Sowers recovered this season by dominating AAA for 10 starts. That 2004 1st round is a very strong one (or at least looks that way now), but I can’t recall if any of them made it to the bigs faster or with a better first impression than Sowers. You can argue about the ceiling of a guy like Sowers, but you can’t argue that for the first two seasons he looked like a fantastic pick. And there’s good reason to think that it will still look like a good pick three years from now.
If only we could’ve drafted Matt Bush! Or Jeff Niemann! Or Neil Walker! Or Mark Rogers! Or Wade Townsend! Or Chris Nelson! Or Bill Bray! Or Trevor Plouffe! Or Phillip Humber! Or Scott Elbert!
STOP TREATING THE DRAFT LIKE THE NBA DRAFT OR THE NFL DRAFT. OR STOP TALKING ABOUT THE DRAFT IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT.
Oh man cap locks for emphasis. You sir, have bested me.
I don’t like grading draft picks after the fact because I am well aware that the draft is a crapshoot. But you will never ever have me believe that taking a college guy who tops out at 91 is a good idea, unless the guyhas inhuman secondary stuff.
there is this thing called projection and player development, though. the indians may very well have seen mechanical or conditioning issues which could be corrected to add speed.
I don’t like grading draft picks after the fact because I am well aware that the draft is a crapshoot.
Then stop.
The defend a bad draft decision by relying on the old adage that the draft is a crapshoot is so damn overplayed. I’m not judging that pick off of what Sowers has become, but who he was when we took him.
I’ve got say you’re in the minority than. My recollection is that Sowers was viewed as the “most polished” and “closest to the majors” pitcher in the draft….which considering how many pitchers flame out, is a very good thing to be. And he fulfilled those prognostications. Over his final two years at Vandy he averaged a K/IP, 4.5 K/BB, and 0.5 HR/9IP. Those aren’t bad numbers.
I’ll be honest, I looked and all I found was me gloating about the guy in all of 06.
I think if I had ever posted in 2004 about him, I would have mentioned my skepticism at picking such a low ceiling guy with that pick. He hoodwinked me with those High A stats though. They were just so damn sexy!
Found this little nugget in my search though: I did accurately stick to my belief that Jason Johnson was a bad signing and would suck even after his hot start, for whatever that’s worth.
Digging through old posts is pretty hilarious, for any of us … “we better not be giving up more than Carmona for Langerhans.”
We still disagree about the Johnson signing, though I may be alone on that.
What you’re saying about Sowers is very much what I’ve said about Crowe, the difference being that Sowers mastered Double-A by the end of his first season.
whoa…here’s a comment I made mid-June of that season. such a bizarre combination of smart and idiotic things:
While I agree that Jason Johnson has obviously been wildly screwed by the defense, it still doesn’t mean we should still be sending him out there every five days. Realistically, we aren’t going to substitute anyone new into our infield defense anytime soon. Benuardo, Belliard, Peralta, and Boone are pretty much locked in till later in the season. It’s possible (maybe even likely) they’ll start playing better defense, but who knows? Substituting in another pitcher whose style meshes with our current defensive strengths and weaknesses might still be a good idea.The problem is who that pitcher might be. I think the three realistic options are Carmona, Guthrie, and Sowers. Sowers has performed the best, but really operates with a similar style to Johnson. Doesn’t miss a lot of bats, but gets people to bang the ball into the ground on a regular basis. The argument in his favor would be that maybe he can do that better than Johnson. Guthrie has a little more even GB/FB ratio, but also doesn’t miss a lot of bats. In other words, batters put a lot of balls in play against him. Carmona has had a high GB/FB ratio this year (2.4 in his time in Cleveland), but this hasn’t necessarily been his career norm. He also is having the most success at striking people out (7.2/9IP). Having seen Carmona’s first start in Detroit, I think he can legitimately be considered somewhat of a power pitcher.
So, what does that all mean? My suggestion would be to swap Johnson and Carmona. We don’t have to worry about how happy Johnson is or how he develops…he’s here for a year than he’ll be gone. Give Carmona five starts and see whether he appears to have more success than Johnson. If he can do a little better job of keeping the ball out of play, I think he can. Finally, leave Sowers in Buffalo. No reason to hurt his confidence by sacrificing his big league debut to bad defense. If the defense begins to improve or Carmona falters, you can always rotate Johnson back in. I just can’t justify keeping a guy with a 1.7 WHIP in the starting rotation of a team that is supposed to be championship caliber.
If you go back through the offseason posts, a huge number of us were right about Quentin shining this year.
Steel Nick
I was wondering if people were talking about Quentin here. I missed pretty much the whole offseason so I wasn’t part of that, but my buddy and I were talking about trying to get him last year. Does anyone know if the Indians even made an offer for him? I don’t think Chicago gave up much, so what would it have taken for us to get him? He’d look really nice in the OF right now.
by Buckeye Brad on Jul 16, 2008 6:48 PM EDT up reply actions
You know what’s overplayed? People wanting to blame something and blaming the MLB draft process.
The draft is totally dumb and hardly even worth talking about between the total inability of any team to consistently project players correctly and the issues of signability. Any player outside of the top 3 picks who makes it to the majors and contributes at all has to be seen as a success when you look at the numbers.
It’s almost as tired as people saying things like “I knew this was going to happen to Jered Weaver” or “I hated the Sowers pick all along, even when he was the best pitcher in baseball for 12 starts.”
Nobody has to defend “bad” draft choices because they’re are almost literally none. The only time anyone brings up the fact that the draft is a crapshoot is when someone gets on this long dead horse of attacking draft choices.
It’s like having to defend yourself for taking a smelly poop. Everyone in the league has been taking tons of smelly poops for years. It’s as natural as walking. It’s just fanspeak to say “Yeah but my team’s poops are way smellier! And I know how to make a not smelly poop!” Sure you do.
We could also have had Ray Liotta, who went to the ChiSox in round 2. The second round that year was an interesting one – Hunter Pence, Yovani Gallardo, Dustin Pedroia, Reid Brignac, Kurt Suzuki.
The only real value of looking back at past drafts is to look for funny names.
I enjoyed all this armchair analysis of Sowers, but it would have been even more educational if some of it has started with “What I’ve learned since being totally wrong about Cliff Lee is this….”.
by elsandito on Jul 16, 2008 11:55 AM EDT reply actions 2 recs
Right. Honestly, what idiot didn’t see Lee randomnly doubling his GO/AO, halving his home run rate, having the best control of his career, and nearly matching the best strikeout rate of his career all in the same year. I was so naive…..
Unable to move, I have been listening to the Saturday, July 19th WTAM broadcast since roughly 3.30pm, and post-game host Andre Knott just described Jeremy Sowers as an enigma. The time is 8.40pm.
by PatBordersHelmet on Jul 19, 2008 8:41 PM EDT reply actions
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