Indians Cloned Byrd Before Trading Him

Due to the trades of CC Sabathia and Paul Byrd, as well as the injuries to Jake Westbrook and Fausto Carmona, the Indians have cycled a lot of arms through their rotation this year. The newest of those arms, Scott Lewis, has made quite the splash, tossing 14 shutout innings in his two appearances so far. Neither the Orioles nor the Twins have been able to hit him so far, and as a kid who doesn’t turn 25 for a few more weeks, he’s getting some fans excited about his potential for 2009 and beyond.

However, a look beyond his early run prevention leads to some warning signs. Lewis has the classic pitch-to-contact skillset of a guy with fringe stuff – he’s not walking anyone (1.29 BB/9) but not missing bats either (5.14 K/9, 5.7% Swinging Strike%), and like most guys without a real fastball, hitters don’t have any problems putting the ball in the air against him (57.9% FB%).

Throwing strikes is nice, but if you’re giving up a ton of flyballs, you’re going to give up home runs. Lewis has managed to keep all 19 of his outfield flies in the park so far, but that’s just simply not going to continue – we’d have expected him to give up a couple of home runs by now, given this skillset, and if he was giving up 1.29 HR/9 instead of his current 0.00, he wouldn’t look quite so sparkly.

As we can see from the pitch data here on Fangraphs, Lewis’ fastball averages 86.5 MPH and his change and curve are both in the mid-70s. This is exactly the kind of stuff we’d expect from a strike-throwing flyballer, and it’s not the repertoire of a guy with much chance to get better.

Lewis is what he is – a younger, more orthodox Paul Byrd. He can pound the strike zone and look okay when the ball stays in the park, but his upside is that of a 5th starter. He can be useful as an innings sponge at the back of a rotation, but it’s unlikely a team would ever want Lewis pitching a meaningful inning in a playoff series.