This is Howry Do It, Baby!

Thought I would go over my thoughts on Bob Howry. At $2.75M plus easy to achieve incentives that should boost him up to Affeldt's $4M per season amount, assuming he returns to his former goodness, that is not a bad deal. We give him a chance to redeem himself (and return to his first organization) and he could give us great value as a reliever if 2008 was a blip on a sterling career so far.

Let's start with his career. 7 seasons of 3.59 ERA or less (out of 10 full seasons), 4 seasons with 3.32 ERA or less out of the last 5 seasons. Career ERA of 3.68, FIP of 3.95. 2008 is an aberration compared to his career, but at age 35 for next season, it could be the start of the end of his career.

So let's look at 2008. 5.35 ERA is the worse full season of his career by far. His previous worse was 4.69, and third worse was 4.19 (which is not that bad either). What appears to be clearly a problem was that he gave up 13 homers in the season, the worse ever in a full season, as 11 was his worse before (in 2001), and he gave up 90 hits in 70.2 IP, only his second season in his career where he gave up more hits than IP during the season.

The home runs were clearly a outlier. His HR/FB% was 11.7% in 2008, when most pitchers regress to around 10%. From 2002 to 2008, his HR/FB% was 8.5%. Had he had only 10%, he would have given up only 11 homers, but if he dropped it to his career numbers, it would have been only 9 homers, which is right in range with what he had given up in his career previously. This would drop his ERA down below 5, at minimum (reducing ER by 1 for each homer; could have been runners of his on base too, which would reduce even more). It also increased his OPS giving up by 124 points, most of the points that was over his career average.

BABIP is clearly an outlier. .354 BABIP is higher than the mean .300 most pitchers regress to, and higher than his career .291 BABIP. The highest he had before was .319 BABIP in 2001 (clear by now that 2001 was his other worse season). That is 16 more hits than he would have given up had he only had a .300 BABIP in 2008. That probably represents the rest of the increase in OPS seen in 2008 versus his career. Reduction of both to career average should result in improvement he should see in 2009, as long as he's not losing his skills.

Looking at his skills, one would not see anything among the things he can control to suggest that 2008 was a season of decline. While his K/9 did drop again, at 7.51 it is very close to his career number of 7.75, just a random variation up and down. However, he was able to reduce his BB/9 to 1.66 and it has been under 2.10 for the past 4 seasons, which is excellent, good pitchers are able to get it under 3.0 but only elite pitchers can get it to the 2.0 level. That combined to improve his K/BB to 4.54 in 2008, versus career of 2.73 and previous high of 4.18 in 2006, where you want relievers to have at least a 2.4 ratio. He also had a down year in LOB%, which was only 70.3% in 2008, versus his 74.9% for his career, leading to more runs scoring on him.

His batted balls stats are also not indicative of decline. His GB/FB ratio was about the same, 0.74 versus 0.77 for 2002-2008 period (Fangraphs only has data for Howry back to 2002). He actually reduced his LD%, usually a good sign for reduced BABIP, with 17.9% in 2008 vs. 19.8% for the period, and could be a sign of development, as he had a LD% of 18.0 in 2006 (vs. 19.7% in 2007). His GB% was 34.9%, right in line with career 35.0%. The only negative was that his FB% rose to 47.2% after a 47.9% in 2007, versus 45.2% for the 2002-2008 period.

Looking at ball and strikes was also positive. For the 2002-2008 period, he threw strikes 64.1% of the time but for 2008, he threw strikes 65.5% of the time. That is certainly is not a sign of decline.

Looking at pitch type, one big difference between 2008 and previous years was that he threw less fast balls and part of the reason for that was a reduction in the speed of his fastball. He threw a fastball only 74.8% of the time (86.2%, 82.8%, and 82.6% in three previous seasons) and at only 91.2 MPH (92.3, 92.8, and 92.8 in three previous seasons). He threw a lot more sliders though, 23.1% of the time vs. 10-15% roughly previous three season, but that speed also fell too, to 83.3 MPH vs. 84.4, 84.2, and 86.4 previously. Changeup percentage wasn't that significant relative to 3 previous seasons but again velocity was down, 83.0 MPH vs. 84.2, 85.1, and 84.5.

It is not a great sign that his velocity fell, but since it fell across all his pitches and he was able to throw for more strikes, and kept his peripherals up or improved, that is the more important point.

Based on all this, he does appear to be slipping, as his velocity fell significantly, but he was able to adjust and kept his peripherals all within career norms or better, which is the more pertinent piece of information regarding his 2009 season with us. Particularly since he'll be pitching at AT&T half of his games, which should help with reducing the number of homers he gives up, particularly against left-handed hitters. With only one year committed, and the strong likelihood that 2009 should be more like his career than 2008, he was a good addition with little risk involved but a potentially large reward if he can return to his career norm of 3.68 ERA or the stretch of 2004-2007 where his ERA was 2.74, 2.47, 3.17, and 3.32.