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Previous entry: Cliff Lee.  Up next, Garrett Olson.

Following the 2008 season there was a lot of uncertainty as to who would close games for the Seattle Mariners in 2009.  J.J. Putz was traded to the New York Mets and Brandon Morrow was penciled into the starting rotation.  Some of the early candidates were thought to be Aaron Heilman, Roy Corcoran, Miguel Batista and Mark Lowe, for better or worse.

Lowe was my early pick for the job.  The way he burst onto the scene in 2006 was still on my mind and he did a decent job in 2008 despite being limited in how often he was able to throw his best pitch, the slider, following experimental elbow surgery the year before.  Between a blistering fastball, the changeup that improved with forced use the year before and the return of his slider, I thought Lowe might be poised for a breakout season.

As it turned out, Morrow ended up getting the gig initially before coughing it up to David Aardsma.  Even if Morrow, who was brilliant out of the bullpen in 2008, hadn’t decided to head to the bullpen, Lowe probably wouldn’t have gotten the job after a rough Spring Training.

But the inconsistent spring (as I remember it, anyway) didn’t keep him from having a decent enough season.  He became one of Don Wakamatsu’s workhorses, making it into the third most games for an American League reliever with 75 appearances (80 innings), proving his health two years removed from microfracture surgery on his elbow.  His average fastball velocity was measured at 96.3 MPH, which was the highest of his career and the fourth highest among all relievers in 2009.  He also threw his slider more (23.9%) versus 2008 (14.7%).

His health was probably the most important thing for him in 2009, but he also made a notable improvement in his walk rate, lowering it to a career low 3.26 BB/9, a mark he hasn’t matched since his pro debut back in 2004.  He’d be in great shape if he could shave off another 0.5-1 BB/9, but the level he was at last year was tolerable for a 7th inning guy.  Of his 75 games, he avoided giving up free passes in 52 of them.

One discouraging stat from Lowe was his K/9, which saw no change from 2008′s mark of 7.8 K/9.  With full use of his slider, why did his K/9 stagnate?

7.8 K/9 is pretty good, but with Lowe’s stuff you’d think he’d be up there with David Aardsma (10.09) and Brandon League (9.16).  One of the reasons that Lowe isn’t blowing as many hitters away could be that his fastball isn’t as lethal as it seems like it would be.  He throws it in the upper 90s and it has ridiculous tailing action, but because Lowe has such a low release point, his fastball has very little downward plane.  The pitch is coming in fast and moving from side to side, but hitters are too easily able to match their swings to the flight path of the pitch, and are able to make contact with the fastball.  Whether or not it’s good contact or not, it doesn’t really matter in terms of his strikeout rate.  Lowe relies on his fastball, but hitters are able to put it into play before having to face the slider.

If that is indeed the case, there are a couple possible remedies.  One would be to alter his mechanics so that he stood taller through release, giving his pitches more downward plane.  This wouldn’t just make his fastball harder to hit, but when batters did make contact they’d likely hit more grounders.  In the last post we talked about Cliff Lee making a similar move which took him from back of the rotation schlub to one of the top 5 or 10 starters in baseball.

But I don’t expect this to happen.  For one, do the Mariners see this as something that needs to be fixed?  Impossible to know until hearing something about it, but I would guess that they’re not very worried about his low release point right now.  Furthermore, tweaking mechanics around can lead to injury if the pitcher starts throwing at full strength right away, and there could be an adjustment period as well where the pitcher’s command could go out the window.

The other way to help Lowe increase his K-rate and, in my opinion, make him a better pitcher overall would be to incorporate his changeup more in 2010.  It was shaky early, but after being forced to use it all of 2008, it became a legitimately good pitch.  In 2009 he moved away from it, cutting its usage from 20.3% in 2008 to 7% last year.  Obviously he feels most comfortable with his slider, as he should be because it’s a really good one, but if he could designate another 5% of his fastball usage to his changeup (based on last year’s ratios) he could give hitters fits.  Even if he’s just throwing throwaway changeups off the plate away it could be helpful.

But even if nothing changes, Seattle has a solid reliever on their hands in Lowe.  Hopefully he’ll add some consistency to his game, and if he does manage to improve just a little bit he could become a truly dominant shutdown ace in the next couple of seasons.