Analyzing Jeremy Sowers, Part II

Before proceeding with my analysis of Jeremy Sowers, I would like to take a brief detour. One of the more interesting and controversial theories in sabermetrics was put forth by sabermetrician Voros McCracken. McCracken’s Defense Independent Pitchig Statistics (DIPS) theory suggests that “major-league pitchers don't appear to have the ability to prevent hits on balls in play.” In other words, pitchers can control whether they strike a batter out, walk a batter, or give up a home run; however, if the batter makes contact with the ball (but it remains in the park), the pitcher has no control over whether the batted ball becomes a hit or an out.

This makes sense intuitively on one level. How often do we see a hard-hit line-drive fall into a well-positioned fielder’s glove? How often do we see a weakly-hit blooper drop over the shortstop’s head? Surely there is some luck involved. However, to say that all pitchers do not have control over any batted balls does not make sense. Surely some pitchers can induce weakly-hit balls (which are then converted into outs) more often than other pitchers. Right?

Wrong. Pitchers are able to control strikeouts, walks, and home runs (as these tend to correlate strongly from one year to the next), but not hits allowed. McCracken suggests that the league average for BABIP (batting average on balls in play) is around .300, and any significant deviation from this figure is due mainly to luck. For individual pitchers, BABIP does not correlate from year-to-year. In other words, a pitcher’s BABIP in one season does not suggest or predict his BABIP next season.

McCracken’s theory has been written about a lot. The theory has also been tweaked a lot, but the general idea remains: pitchers cannot control whether balls in play become hits or outs.

With that theory out of the way, let’s continue with our evaluation of Sowers.

In 2005, Sowers was legitimately excellent. His overall K/BB ratio was an impressive 145/28 in 153 innings. He also gave up only 13 homers. In short, he did everything you hope a pitching prospect would do: he kept the ball in the yard, struck out almost one batter per inning, and walked virtually no one.

In 2006 Sowers’s ERA while at Buffalo was 1.39. No pitcher is this good, no matter who he is. Obviously, there was some luck involved to keep Sowers’s ERA at such a miniscule level. However, beyond that, Sowers’s indicators were very poor at Buffalo, especially in comparison to his stellar 2005 numbers.

Sowers struck out only 59 in 97 innings, a strikingly low figure of 4.99 strikeouts per nine innings. While this by itself is worrisome, Sowers’s excellent control seemingly worsened, leading to 29 walks (or 2.68 per nine innings). To his credit, he only gave up one home run, an excellent sign. So how did Sowers manage to post a 1.39 ERA? One thing really stands out: if you were going to get a hit against Sowers, it was going to be a single. Period. Opposing hitters slugged a paltry .287 against Sowers. For comparison’s sake, anemic-hitting Jason Tyner’s career slugging percentage is .315.

One of the reasons for this could be Sowers’s ability to generate ground balls. Pitchers who generate a lot of grounders (such as Chien-Ming Wang, Derek Lowe, Jake Westbrook, and Brandon Webb) tend to allow fewer extra-base hits, as ground balls cannot become homers, and rarely become anything other than singles. This might make sense, except for one little fact: Sowers is not a ground ball pitcher. In Buffalo, he allowed 156 ground balls and 137 fly balls. With the Indians, Sowers allowed more fly balls than ground balls.

Nonetheless, whether they were fly balls or ground balls, they weren’t finding holes when they were put in play. In Buffalo, Sowers’s BABIP was .263---meaning that 26.3% of the balls put into play became hits. That’s a low number, although not incredibly low. Let’s compare it to other starters on Buffalo; presumably they were playing in front of the same defense. Five other pitchers who started games for the Bisons (Rob Bell, Fausto Carmona, Jake Dittler, Jeremy Guthrie, and Jeremy Stanford) posted BABIPs of .284, .342, .321, .273 and .277, respectively. All higher than Sowers’s BABIP. Furthermore, the BABIP for all of the International League was .305.

To sum up: Sowers gave up an unusually low amount of hits; when he did give up hits, they were almost always singles. This is a good recipe for success; however, it does not suggest future success against better hitters at the major league level.

Sure enough, after giving up one homer to AAA hitters, Sowers surrendered 10 homers to MLB hitters in approximately the same amount of innings. His slugging-percentage-against rose to .392---still a low number, but much higher than he had given up at Buffalo. However, Sowers’s apparent ability to prevent balls in play from becoming hits persisted: his BABIP against was .256. The Indians’ defense was not good in 2006, witness the BABIPs of their other starters: .294, .322, .296, and .318 for Sabathia, Westbrook, Lee, and Byrd respectively.

Tomorrow I will finish my look at Jeremy Sowers by suggesting what this analysis means for the future. Was Sowers just REALLY lucky in 2006? Is he an exception to the DIPS “rule,” a la Tom Glavine or Jamie Moyer? (Hint: not even Glavine or Moyer are exceptions to the DIPS rule.)