Give 'em Some Stankeye!

Quick story for you. This past Sunday I was in Berkeley for the Dave Matthews Band concert at the Greek Theater, a show that just kicked all kinds of ass. At one point during the opening act I left my seat to make a restroom run. As I was getting in the ridiculously long line for the men's room, I accidentally bumped shoulders with another guy my age as he passed by in the other direction. When I looked up I recognized him as Noah Lowry. Now, as much as I would have loved to have introduced myself and talked to Lowry, I didn't. Two reasons: 1) I was drunk, and 2) I'm not sure where drunkenly accosting a complete stranger while standing in line to take a piss ranks on the weirdness scale, but I imagine it's pretty high.

If I had spoken to Lowry I would have definitely wished him good luck and a speedy return to the mound. While he probably won't pitch at all this year, he's slated to throw in Winter Ball and be back in the rotation in 2009, hopefully in place of the increasingly awful Kevin Correia. In a perfect world, Lowry regains the bite on his changeup and puts together a year more like 2005 than 2006 or 2007. If Jonathan Sanchez can build on the promise he's shown and if Zito (who, as we speak, has just finished six terrific innings) can be average-ish, then the Giants should have one hell of a rotation. Hopefully the nerve problem that sidelined Lowry all year was the cause of his one ghastly start in the spring and he won't be doing Nuke Laloosh impressions the next time we see him. Hopefully he also enjoyed the amazing DMB version of The Maker as much as I did.

--If I had bumped into Tim Lincecum instead of Lowry, not only would I have gone out of my way to shake his hand, but I'd likely have bowed to him and chanted "I'm not worthy!" Geez, how good is this kid? Another dominating start has put his record at 16-3, and he leads the National League in pretty much every category that matters. He should, should, be the odds-on favorite to win the Cy Young, but sadly a lot of writers still stick to the sad, old-timey belief that pitching wins are a true determinant of pitching performance, and thus Lincecum is in a neck-and-neck battle with Brandon Webb, who has 19 such wins.

Even adjusting for ballpark, Lincecum kicks Webb's butt in just about every category (his ERA+ is almost 40 points higher). If this disparity in performance holds up, it'll be a crime if Lincecum doesn't win. I've said before that most of the major award voting is a sham (don't even get me started on the Gold Gloves) and normally the writers give out the awards to the best story instead of the best player. Just the fact that Carlos Delgado is even in the MVP conversation serves to illustrate how far the insanity has gone. When the BBWAA completely fucked up and gave Bartolo Colon the Cy over Johan Santana in 2005, based on Colon's 20 wins, I just stopped taking this stuff seriously.

However, when a Giants player becomes involved, I'm forced to care again. The Giants haven't had a Cy Young winner since 1967 when Mike McCormick won it, so it's been a long enough wait. Jason Schmidt was robbed of the Cy in 2003, and that pissed us all off royally, but this season if Lincecum loses it'll be an even more egregious snub. If the writers can't even recognize the (far and away) best pitcher in the league then they should just scrap the Cy Young. Seriously.

Labels: noah lowry, stupid award voting, Tim Lincecum

The first KNBR Giants broadcast of spring training has always brought with it good feelings and memories, none better than three years ago, when I was hobbled with a severe ankle sprain and could do nothing but sit in my room and listen to Jon Miller and Duane Kuiper. The dulcet sounds of The Great Ones made the pain go away.

On Saturday, I flipped on the radio expecting a similar sense of euphoria. I thought, as with every March, the sounds of baseball would be music to my ears after a depressing winter of steroid allegations and miserable superstar trade returns. No such luck. The sounds of birds chirping, fans chattering, vendors hocking, and bats connecting- indeed, lots of bats connecting- were all there. Unfortunately, there would be no fond memories to be had from this sunny Spring Training day.

I turned the game on in the third inning, and upon hearing the score, the first thing I could think of was my dear old friend...

















Zito was a disaster in his Spring debut, as the A's got up 13-0 after three innings and walloped the Giants to the tune of 23-5. Not exactly the kind of start we Giants fans wanted out of the gate for Zito, a guy for whom we're still holding out a sliver of hope that he can sort of, kind of justify that contract after a poor 2007. Luckily, Zito was much better in his second outing against the Royals on Wednesday, so perhaps it was jitters, or maybe he's still secretly on the A's payroll (he did get beat down by them twice last season).

Then there's Noah Lowry. Yeah, we were all concerned about his declining peripheral numbers, but where the hell did this come from? In his start against the Rangers on Monday, Lowry walked nine batters in an inning-plus, but that's only the beginning of the story. Many of his offerings had the fans behind home plate thanking their lucky stars for the protective screens in front of them. Lowry's performance more resembled an RPG attack than a pitcher trying to get outs, as he threw several pitches over the catcher's head, endangering fans, birds, UFOs and many other low-flying creatures. It would have been easier to believe that Lowry were out there doing some sort of comedy routine, because this manner of wildness is almost unheard of.

It was later revealed that Lowry had a case of exertional compartmental syndrome in his forearm (yeah, I'm as confused as you are. Try this), as opposed to some mental breakdown. Lowry also bristled when reporters compared his mound antics to Rick Ankiel's famous 2000 playoff meltdown. He's expected to miss at least a month, and hopefully this injury is the cause of the wildness, so that Lowry can go back to being an effective pitcher upon his return.

The problem is that Lowry is still no sure thing to still be anything close to good even if he can fully recover. As we all know, his 14-8 record and 3.92 ERA were both the product of unbelievable luck, luck that in a just world would have gone to Matt Cain. Lowry's K:BB ratio was an awful 87:87 in 156 innings, and his ability to keep the ball in the yard was probably all that kept his ERA from ballooning up to 5.00.

Lowry has now gone from a cost-controlled young pitching asset to a major question mark in less than six months, and he isn't even a guarantee to make the rotation anymore if Kevin Correia or Jonathan Sanchez can establish themselves. All of the trade value we Giants fans were hyping up for Lowry is now gone, as he's now an injury-riddled potential head case who can't even be described as an innings-eater (he hasn't broken 160 innings since his terrific 2005 season, and he probably won't touch it this year). It looks like Dave Righetti may have his work cut out for him putting this once-promising lefty back together again.

The battle for Lowry's spot in the rotation is now on. Correia likely seems entrenched now after his strong showing in eight 2007 starts. If it were up to me, I'd give Sanchez a month in the rotation and give him a chance to fail. He has the stuff to excel and he has nothing to prove in the minors anymore. He's been jerked around by the Giants for too long, and it's time to just leave him alone and see what he's got. If the Giants decide to ignore him for more veteran mediocrity goodness like, say, Victor Santos, I think I'm going to throw up all over my keyboard.

Labels: bad zito, noah lowry, spring training battles

It was certainly a happy Thanksgiving for us Giants fans, even though the team itself did absolutely nothing. No, we should all be joining hands to celebrate the signings of Torii Hunter and Francisco Cordero to too many years at goofy money, two moves that nicely take away any temptation the Giants may have had to overpay for these guys themselves.

The shocking part of the Hunter signing isn't the fact that he was overpaid (hell, I'm surprised he only got five years), but who did the overpaying. The Angels signed Hunter to play center field when they already have a grossly overpaid center fielder of their own and a glut of other outfielders on the 40-man roster. It seems like kind of a redundant PR move. I love Hunter and all, and he's fun to watch, but he's also entering his 30's and likely will start to decline both offensively and defensively pretty soon, and his bat isn't all that good in the first place. I'll echo this guy's sentiments.

Cordero, though...where do I begin? The Giants were actually rumored to be interested in Cordero at one point, but if they'd paid Cordero the $46 million over four years that he got from the Reds I'd have pulled a Terminator and gone back in time to off Brian Sabean's mom before he was even conceived. How do you justify handing out nearly $12 million a year to a reliever who will only give you like 70 innings max? Cordero is good, yes, but he's not Mariano Rivera or Eric Gagne circa 2003, and guys like him tend to be hanging cheaply around baseball, if you just know where to look. Do you think it's a fluke that the Padres came up with Heath Bell, Scott Linebrink, and Cla Meredith?

I can just picture Reds GM Wayne Krivsky this morning, leaning back in his chair, high on turducken leftovers, cackling in joy at his new gem. Hey, they solved their closer problem, right? Too bad the rest of their roster is a bloody mess. I guess the moral of the story here is that, as much as we Giants fans bitch about our GM and his oft-puzzling moves, it could be much, much worse. So let's all stop and belatedly give thanks to the GMs who may have saved the Giants from themselves this offseason.

-Speaking of the Reds, there was a small rumor that they might be open to trading Josh Hamilton in order to clear out some of the crowd in the outfield. I'm going to say it right now: Noah Lowry for Hamilton. Hamilton's history of injury and personal problems make him a risk, but he can flat out rake (.292/.368/.554 in his rookie season) and the Giants need some young power hitters. He's a 35-homer guy if he can stay out of the trainer's room and out of the back of a squad car.

The question is, would the Reds do it? I'm not so sure. Any baseball front office-type should be able to look at Lowry's numbers and see that a lot of his good fortune last season came because he was very stingy with the home run ball. Now take him out of Mays Field and put him in Great American Ballpark, a much more homer-friendly ballpark, and it's not hard to see Lowry's ERA ballooning. Suddenly, you've traded a young, All-Star-caliber slugger for a cheaper, marginally less-shitty version of Eric Milton.

I'd take the risk if I were the Giants, mostly because I'm very down on Lowry at this point, but I really can't see the Reds willing to go for it, especially when they have two near-frontline starting pitchers already and a couple of other potential aces on the horizon. Of course, the Reds aren't exactly the paragon of intelligent baseball decision-making, so stay tuned.

-TGIF Random Video...

Labels: insane free agent signings, josh hamilton, noah lowry, trade stuff

On Sunday the Giants are going to be facing this guy named Dave Bush, a starting pitcher for the Brewers who has been one of my own personal enigmas for going on a year now. I traded for Bush in my fantasy keeper league last season (don't worry, this isn't going to be another of my interminable roto league rants, so don't click to another blog just yet), hoping to buy low for a future star pitcher. He wasn't setting the world on fire, but I was entranced by the potential that his shining peripheral numbers seemed to point to.

Bush came up with the Blue Jays in 2004, put up pretty good numbers in two years with Toronto, then was traded to the Brew Crew before the 2006 season. Last year, Bush's ERA was a mediocre 4.41, hardly something to be excited over. His peripheral numbers though? Maybe some of the best in the major leagues. In 210 innings, Bush struck out 166 batters while walking just 38, which tied him for the best K:BB ratio in the National League. His 1.13 WHIP was fourth in the NL.

I was excited. In all of these peripheral stat categories, Bush rated with the best pitchers in the majors. It stood to reason that with a little better luck, he could lop a run off of his ERA and be a Cy Young contender. Some fantasy magazines were picking him as a top 20 pitcher going into this season.

Unfortunately, that great leap forward into the NL elite just hasn't happened, much to the chagrin of my fantasy team. In 2007 Bush has regressed considerably. His peripherals aren't bad (1.37 WHIP, 112:35 K/BB ratio), but his ERA still isn't matching them and has been hovering around five all year. He is giving up way more hits this season than last season, so maybe he's just really unlucky this year, or maybe he was just really lucky last year. If it's the latter, my fantasy team shudders.

Let's compare this case to one of our own beloved pitchers, Mr. Noah Lowry, a guy who ranks ninth in the NL in ERA despite an atrocious 82:82 K/BB ratio. Every Lowry start is a full-out assault on the nerves, with runners all over the bases and batters licking their chops at another of those changeups floating in over the plate. Yet, at the end of the day, Lowry comes out ahead. Bush, meanwhile doesn't really give up many baserunners, yet his ERA is a run-and-a-half worse.

What the hell is going on here? My tireless efforts at trying to unravel this Dave Bush/peripheral stat mystery are beginning to rival those of the translation of the Rosetta Stone. Has my lifelong allegiance to the ways of the peripheral stat all been for naught? Have we stat dweebs been overrating them all this time? Well, no. For one thing, Bush has given up 22 homers so far this season, which is awful. Lowry has given up eight. Even though Lowry has been better this year (and perhaps it's sacrilege saying this on a Giants page), I'd still take Bush's next five years over Lowry's, but that says more about Lowry's bad control and weak stuff than it says about Bush.

Maybe some guys just can't ever live up to their peripheral stats. Javier Vazquez of the White Sox is sort of the golden boy for this kind of underachiever, or at least he has been since 2004. Perhaps Bush is just eminently hittable, and his great stats last year were a fluke stemming from the grace period of NL hitters adapting to him. In most cases, guys with 2006 Bush-caliber peripherals throw hard and blossom later. Bush might just be an exception to the rule. We'll see what happens on Sunday, and maybe I'll see something that sheds some light on the Great Dave Bush Conundrum.

Until then, all hail the god of the peripheral stat!

Labels: dave bush conundrum, noah lowry

Now that we have that out of the way...

With the trade deadline coming up in a hurry, and the Giants in desperate need of an influx of younger players, it's very possible that we'll see some moves that cull some of the veterans from the roster and bring back something that will maybe make this team's future brighter. Unfortunately, the Giants may not have much to bargain with. Who's going to give up a young, strapping five-tool prospect for the sub-.300 OBP stylings of Dave Roberts, after all?

Matthew Pouliot of Rotoworld had some damning things to say about the Giants' trade leverage:

>The Giants and Red Sox continue to be linked, with Omar Vizquel, Randy Winn, Dave Roberts and, gulp, Matt Morris getting mentioned as possibilities for Boston. Still, I don't see how there can be much to it. Morris' trade value is gone. Winn is owed $16.25 million in 2008-09 and Roberts is due $13 million over the same timeframe, making them way too expensive to be carried as fourth outfielders. Vizquel has made it clear he doesn't want to be a utilityman.<

Ugh. Ugh and a half. Winn's contract-to-production ratio is poor enough to where he's basically trade poison, and if that weren't bad enough, he has a no-trade clause for this season, so rule him out completely. Roberts might have had some value if he weren't due, as the article above said, $13 million over the next two seasons. No one wants to pay that kind of money for a rapidly declining fourth outfielder-type (except the Giants apparently...grrrr). As for Morris...gulp indeed. He's been horrendous for over a month and any GM who trades for him should probably be fired on the spot. Although that's not to say I don't hope and pray that there's a GM out there dumb enough to actually do it.

Ryan Klesko might bring something back because he's still productive and dirt cheap, but don't expect Billy Butler or anything. Ray Durham also might have trade value, because he has a reasonable contract (I still say bringing back Durham was a decent gambit, even though he's sucked this year), and production at second base is hard to find. Would the Mets give up Lastings Milledge (weird baggage and all) for Durham? Here's a fun little debate about it.

In all, I think the Giants' most valuable trading chip is clearly Noah Lowry (well, it would be Cain or Lincecum but...you know). Lowry is young, he's cheap, and he has proven he can go out and give you 200 innings a year. Those are some traits that would make a lot of teams salivate. There are fringe contenders all over in need of pitching, namely the Yankees and Phillies, but there are also young teams like the Devil Rays who have more young outfielders than they know what to do with and might be a perfect trading match. There were rumors this past winter that Tampa Bay's Carl Crawford was on the block (who knows why, but this is the Devil Rays, after all). If the Giants could possibly swing Lowry and Jonathan Sanchez for Crawford, it's something they should do in a heartbeat. That's probably an LSD-trip scenario, but there should be something close that the Giants could work out.

Many fans are squeamish about gutting the Giants' stable of young pitching, and rightfully so. However, I'm not convinced Lowry is a player who should be regarded as an untouchable. Giants Cove beat me to the punch on this one, but I'll reiterate the argument, because it's a good one.

Like I said earlier, Lowry has proven he can go out and throw a lot of innings, but with his poor K/BB ratios (in decline since his terrific 2005) there's every indication that he's going to fall off, maybe not this year, but soon. You see, if a pitcher has the kind of average strikeout rates that Lowry does, without great control, like Lowry, it's a recipe for disaster. We've learned over the years from those pesky BABIP and DIPS nerds that the more balls that are put into play, the higher the likelihood that some are going to just fall in for lucky hits. It's a bitch, but that's the way the world turns. If a pitcher puts a lot of runners on base to go along with those balls being put in play, and he can't miss bats, he's walking a tightrope. One unlucky inning and his day is ruined.

This is Lowry's problem. If everything falls right, he could be an even better Kirk Rueter. There's nothing, nothing, wrong with that. However, what he isn't is some indispensible asset. If his home run rate ticks even a smidge northward (he's given up an absurd six homers in 119 innings; he gave up 21 in both '05 and '06), his ERA is going to skyrocket.

The market for pitching right now is, I'd say, irrational (take a look at the Jeff Suppan and Jason Marquis contracts, after all). The market for young pitching is downright zany. I'm not saying the Giants should trade Lowry just for the hell of it. I'm saying they should dangle him out there and see what kind of offers bite back. If they get lowballed, keep him. He's a good pitcher. If the team can get a real, solid young player for him, though, a player who can serve as a building block to get this offense to a point of respectability, jump on it. He's the Giants' best bet for getting good value in a trade at the deadline.

Labels: bad zito, noah lowry, trade stuff