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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Weak article