Slowey is Slower
Kevin Slowey shows us that it’s not enough to just not walk guys. If your stuff is hittable, batters will earn their bases on the field.
That said, Slowey had a very nice year last year, and with a K/9 right around the league average (6.90 K/9), there was some hope that he would build on the campaign and take another step forward this year.
So far, fans and fantasy managers are still waiting for that step forward. Instead, Slowey’s strikeout rate has fallen almost a full run (6.02), and his 1.54 WHIP is full of dinks, dunks and blasts. It’s certainly not walks, as Slowey still sports an elite walk rate (0.89 BB/9). The question lingers: how much of this poor start is lousy luck and how much is due to mediocre stuff?
Luck has surely played a big part. His BABIP is .370 and his FIP is 4.44, so his ERA is a little bloated by the luck of the bounce. But even the secondary statistics can’t agree about his luck. He’s sporting a 35.4% infield fly ball rate, which is unsustainably lucky (it’s 15% for his career). Also, he’s stranding 76.6% of his baserunners, which is slightly lucky. And for a guy with a career home run rate over 1 per game, his 10.8% home run per fly ball rate is very neutral.
He’s also giving up a career high 24.1% line drive rate, which is a good spot to start talking about his stuff. With an 89 MPH fastball, an 84 MPH slider, a 74 MPH curveball and an 83 MPH changeup, there’s just not enough differentiation in speed between his pitches to really keep the hitters off balance. He’s usually in the zone (see his walk rate), and his 91.3% contact rate in the zone puts him at 24th worst in the league in that category. (Teammate Glen Perkins ‘leads’ the league with batters making contact on 98% of pitches inside the zone, and Nick Blackburn is 23rd, so there’s something in the water in Minnesota, it seems.)
A quick look at some pitch F/X samples doesn’t provide too many clues. Slowey’s slider is actually breaking a couple inches more this year, and the rest of his stuff seems intact, with one major caveat. Slowey has lost almost a mile per hour on his fastball (89.9 to 89.2). His slider has lost one and a half miles per hour (85.7 to 84.1). Since he wasn’t much of a strikeout pitcher to begin with, and his stuff isn’t very fierce either, this slight velocity loss may be some of the reason for his poor start this year. Without more velocity history, it’s hard to tell if this is a temporary blip or not, but a peek at his next pitch f/x data would be a good idea for those thinking of acquiring him. A few ‘90’s on the gun would serve him well.
Another interesting question that arises when looking at Slowey’s numbers is if he should pitch outside the zone a little more. Batters are reaching on 26.2% of his offerings outside the strike zone, a number in line with his past (25.9% career). That number also puts him right next to such strikeout luminaries as Felix Hernandez and Jake Peavy. Since batters make contact on 72.9% on those pitches, it may be possible that Slowey could expand his zone a little for better results.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
I remember reading Slowey saying that he intended to throw more balls outside of the zone a few starts ago. I haven’t seen this happen much yet, although he did walk a few guys in his last start.
His BABIP was up over .400 before his last start (and a half due to weather). He’s also young and in the process of figuring out his game. He’ll come back to us.
What happened to his k/9 after today’s start? God damn it, respect sample size.
Weak article
The sample size caveat hangs over every piece of writing this early in the season, and perhaps as Ryan Dempster showed us last year, the sample size may not be big enough until you include multiple seasons. But since we still have to make decisions, it’s worth looking into differences in approach and stuff especially. I stand behind the article. (Yes, his K/9 went up to 6.56, but the average MPH of his pitches did not change.)
As for Ben’s comment, I do like him to recover, mostly. Anyone with a K/BB ratio that is as elite as Slowey’s gets multiple chances in my book. But if you don’t have dominant stuff, drops in speed can be worrisome.
Eno,
I don’t have a problem with “a best guess” analysis in the absence of irrefutable evidence. For example, i appreciate your data on contact% in the zone and out of the zone.
My problems with your article are two fold, however.
1) I think that the 24% LD rate is noise and a weak statistic to employ. His rate has been around 20% prior to this year.
2) Unless something dramatically changes with a player in the early weeks of the year (ie. drop in velocity, huge spikes or drops in k/9 or bb/9), I find articles like this to be largely pointless. There are a lot of interesting baseball related questions out there. Kevin Slowey, thus far, is not one of them. He is, for all intents and purposes, the same guy as the 2008 version.
I’ll take the criticism. It is probably most likely that Slowey is still the same guy.
In my defense, however, I didn’t make a huge deal of the line drive rate, I just reported the fact. It is, of course, early to be making a big deal of an inflated line drive rate.
And, in the end, perhaps the mile per hour he’s lost off of his fastball and slider won’t be significant, either. But he does live on the edge with the combination of his in-the-zone approach and non-dominant stuff, so any change in velocity should be reported, imho.
I look at this article and see a couple of questions. First, the 35.4% infield fly ball rate is stated as unsustainably lucky and the 24% LD rate is not listed as unlucky but a real change. Second a 0.7 MPH drop in fastball velocity is turned into a 1 MPH change in velocity. Without the data I do not know if the drop is statistically significant but round up to 1 MPH exaggerates the issue. Slowey’s walk rate is listed but it is not mentioned that it is 0.45 BB/9 lower than last year or that his K/BB rate has increase from last year.
I guess that when I read the article I get the idea that the author has an opinion on what is going on and tweaking the presentation of the data to support this opinion. I think that Slowey is probably the same pitcher this year as last. Could the change in his pitches be a problem? Maybe, but I do not think there is enough data to make that leap yet.
I disagree that the line drive rate is presented as change, but do see that it’s mentioned as a career high. With a relatively high career line drive rate (over 20%), it was more indicative of his non-dominant stuff and an entry into discussing the fact that if his stuff was really losing speed, it would be a real problem for him, since he pitches in the zone so much and gives up contact on over 90% of his pitches in the zone. That’s the main thrust of the article, especially considering that the sample sizes on the line drive rate and K/9 and BB/9 are low, and they are all generally within his career range anyway.
However, one fact remains, and the sample size is relatively high. He’s pitched 741 pitches so far this year, and his slider is 1.7 MPH slower and his fastball is 0.9 MHP slower. That gave me a title and a reason to write about Slowey.
Looking at Slowey’s pitch fx game data, 2-5 curveballs per game are being misclassified as sliders. The pitches in question group with Slowey’s other curveballs in velocity and movement. I do not know how to get velocity of individual pitches so I do not know exactly what his true slider velocity it, however most of the large drop in his slider velocity appear to be attributable to these errors.
Now that is interesting. I’ll have to take a look when I have a moment.