and what would happen, had the sox wrote off the julio contract and then traded mike for julio? would this be like getting julio for free? not seriously.

even if we got julio for free, that would still be an overpayment.

oh yea, 2 things for theo, never make a trade with texas (see gagne) or buy a free agent that had previously been a dodger (see julio, jury is still out on jd)

First off, how can you be suprised that Pedroia regressed from his MVP season? Did you really believe that was predictive of his future value. Secondly can you list any other second basemen other than Chase Utley (who by the way is the best 2nd basemen of this generation) who was better offensively than Pedroia, and did not suck defensively (Bye Bye Kinsler)?

More importantly however, do you believe offense and offense alone is the only way to build a strong team able to compete. I know big offensive teams are more sexy and fun to look at, but good teams need to be well rounded. Unless Lowell can rebound to being a league average third basemen again (not impossible, but not likely either) his positive offensive attributes (OPS + of 108) will be completely undermined by his inability to field his position competently.

I am a big fan of Mike Lowell, I have very fond memories of him wearing the laundry of my favorite team, but he is not the type of hitter that warrants sacrificing defense at a crucial position. Maybe if he posted a line with an OBP closer to .400 and a SLG around .470 he would be, but he is simply not that type of hitter.

(Before anyone criticizes my spelling or grammar, I would like to mention that it is 2AM, I just got work, and I am on my second glass of wine. Get over yourselves, we are discussing baseball.)

Not exactly sudden w/ his BB%, though I didn’t see much signaling a downturn: 4 of 5 best rates came in first five full seasons (00 – 04), with an average of 9.5% (good for better than league median) versus 8.2% for 05-08 (close to the league’s bottom third); 2000 and 2002 – 04 had scores of 9.6 – 10.2; 2005 – 08′s HIGHEST score was 8.4%

His 2009 wOBA actually falls in the bottom half of the 154 qualifying batters, despite having the second best babip of his career (his wOBA was only 6th best of 10 year career, despite that aid).

In fact, he’s an interesting case of not-so-obvious decline. But if you compare his 4 years before and after signing in Boston (where his scores should be better, park wise), some curious things show. He has 21% more o-swings in the latter years than the former, and what is more, he has an 18% higher o-contact % … combined, that’s a lot of hitting less-than-ideal offerings. Interesting to note: check out that, for 8 years in a row now, that o-contact % has grown, and same goes during the last bunch of years for the 0-swing … such trends are destined to reduce taking balls and, therefore, walks … but maybe suggests more..

Maybe growing tendency to poach outside of the plate had something to do with him not being able to catch the fastball as well as he had in years past, leading him to start chasing some bad breaking stuff: his wFB/C (how good he was at hitting the fastball) went .73, .55, .54, and .06 in 06-09. .76 is about average, and .06 is worse than about 75% of hitters.

That he managed to actually hit those pitches, however, might not be a good thing. Having to hit offspeed stuff made his GB/FB rate soar (02-05 avg: .67, 06-09 avg.: .84, a full 25% jump over those two time periods), with the increase happening steadily throughout his career (from his first full season in 2000 (.63) that would rank him 5th lowest if we used the 2009 season’s GB/FB leaderboard, to his most recent season (.95), which shoots him all the way up to around 50th (or, from having a lower rate than over 95% of the league to having more than over 30% of them).

So then, why do I think any of these leading indicators actually point to the steady-seeming wOBAs of both his last four years in Seattle and the four in Boston as misleading? After all, the first group avg. .345, and the second .353 … an increase, of all things, as his career continues to progress (though this doesn’t include park effect, which definitely alters things: 2007′s Batting Value for calculating WAR — a season I’ll talk about in a moment in which he compiled his career-high wOBA — is actually worse than two other years … because they were played in the Marlins’ stadium, instead of cozy Fenway).

Well, look first at his career BABIPs, 8 of 10 of them ranging just from .272 – .304 … not spread very broadly at all … EXCEPT 2005 and 2007: .253 and .342, respectively. Those two single years add 60 points to an only 30 spread for eight other years.

Guess what? The .253 year led to by far his worst offensive season, with his .291 wOBA WAY WAY below his second worst … .337!

And, in 2007, his .342 babip led to, you guessed it, his best wOBA: .377 (which, admitedly, is close to two other years … but their own babips sure aren’t: a full 42 and 70 points lower!)

What WASN’T different were all those indicators noted earlier — the ongoing trends towards fewer walks, more groundballs, more swings and contact outside the strikezone, less ability to hit the fastball (a bit of a problem in the MLB, no?), etc. — didn’t alter course. So, taking that consistency together with the two anomalous seasons with the extreme BABIPs, these were clearly results born out of luck, not improved ability. That the best year occurs in his last four years, while the worst is in the 4 before that, skews, at first, that all of those indicators are, in fact, accompanied by a slumping offensive career. You just don’t make a living hitting out of the strike zone, losing a knack for the fastball, etc., which occured whether it was during the logical majority of years or the two flukey years (both the great and the horrid one).

So, take out 2005 and 2007, and what do you get for ’02 – ’04 vs. ’06, ’08, and ’09? Three sub-career average wOBAs following three above-average wOBAs, leading to an average of .364 in ’02-’04 to .345 for the last three.

To paint it clearly, this drops him down a full 20% of all hitters on the overall rankings. Or, to get back to WAR’s Batting Value, he falls from an average of 22.3 raa to 4.6! In other words, in just a few years he went from creating over 2 wins a year just with his bat to less than half of one (a 79% fall in effectiveness). Hell, if one insists on adding in ’05 and ’07, Batting Value “only” drops from 12.2 – 9.1 (or a still eye catching 31&) … despite the clearly massive element luck, and not ability, had on those two years.

The truth of the matter is that Mike Lowell has been slipping, slowly but surely, for some time along very consistent, if not immediately noticeable, paths.

Of course, I could be totally wrong … I’d never looked at a bunch of those stats closely with any player before now, and was just asking myself whether the similar movement in a handful of stats catching my eye had a story to tell us. I think so, but it is quite possible, too, that I have no idea what I’m talking about. Thoughts?

P.S. this is all clearly backward looking. I would still give cudos to the bosox for grabbing him up off that wretched season because I’m sure those savy Bostonites recognized a babip when they saw one…

“Let’s let him have a full season at AAA(with whatever organization he’s with) to assess whether or not he’s a “thud” or a potential impact bat for the future.”

That’s better. ;)

Let’s let him have a full season at AAA(with whatever organization he’s with) to assess whether he’s still thudding.

that said, he’s 36. there isn’t much reason to ignore 2009, it’s much more relevant than 2004-2008. anyone watching him play 3B last year (and i realize you root for a team in the NL and probably didn’t see him that much) could see he was pretty much toast.

in what world is a 5+ WAR player mediocre