Tigers Upgrade Bullpen with Mark Lowe

On July 7th, 2006, a 23-year-old righty made his major league debut against the Tigers. He entered the game in relief and immediately began putting up 99s on the radar gun. It wasn’t enough, however, to prevent Chris Shelton from singling to shortstop and beating out the throw. Brandon Inge also wasn’t afraid of the velocity, as he hit a ground-rule double to center. The young righty was now flustered. He hit Curtis Granderson to load the bases. He paced around the mound, gathered himself, and then rallied to strike out Placido Polanco, get a weak grounder from Ivan Rodriguez, and strike out Magglio Ordonez to end the threat.

On that day, Mark Lowe began a journey that started with the Mariners and continued on to the Rangers (in the Cliff Lee deal), and then the Dodgers, Angels, Nationals, Rays, Indians, Mariners (again), and Blue Jays. And now, almost ten years later, the Tigers have signed him with a two-year deal to be their setup man. It’s been quite a trip for him.

Health has been the main problem for Lowe, and it started that first year. He was shut down for microfracture surgery on a cartilage problem in that right elbow, which robbed him of much of his rookie and sophomore years. He missed over 190 days dealing with it. It probably also prevented him from smoothing out his command, which led to a bad year in 2008.

But the swinging strikes were there — double digits despite all the problems — and in 2009, he finally put together the pieces. He added two ticks on the gun and found the strike zone, and was a top-50 reliever that year, even without a stellar strikeout rate.

The velocity stepped back again the next year, probably because his back started hurting, and he never threw 60 innings in a season again after that. He was traded in the Cliff Lee deal even though he needed a microdiscectomy in 2010. He missed nearly 150 days due to that surgery, and was throwing 93 or so in three appearances at the end of the season.

His velocity returned in 2011, and, for the second time in his career, Lowe struck out more batters than the league average reliever. He gave up too many homers, though, and the whiffs started to dissipate, and then Lowe was on the shuttle to the Round Rock Express. He ended the year giving up David Freese’s game-six-tying home run in the World Series — quite the capper on the second-best year of his career to that date.

Then he was passed around baseball, showing the worst velocity of his career at several different stops. Maybe an intercostal strain didn’t help, maybe there were more injuries in the minor leagues. At least he spent the time striking out enough minor leaguers that the next team would show enough interest to sign him to a minor league deal. And with the Rays he tweaked his mechanics to be more simple and quicker to the plate.

In late 2014, the Indians released Lowe. The bases were loaded against him again. It’s fitting that the Mariners gave him the second chance that led to this recovery.

Finding his health was one part. A new grip on the slider also led to the most drop on his slider combined with the best velocity of his career (and the third-best whiff rate). He no longer throws that old devastating circle change, but he got more whiffs and strikeouts last year than he ever had, and his trade to the Blue Jays this season was more of the happy kind of trade, when he was able to do this with his new slider and easier mechanics.

After a story like this, and a signing like this, the parallels to Ryan Madson are too strong to ignore. Oft-injured reliever finds velocity, blows away the league, and gets multiple years for it. Sounds familiar. And the two were very comparable last year.

Mark Lowe vs Ryan Madson in 2015

Name	IP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	BABIP	GB%	HR/FB	ERA	FIP	xFIP	WAR
Mark Lowe	55	9.98	1.96	0.65	0.307	40.3%	8.9%	1.96	2.57	2.83	1.2
Ryan Madson	63.1	8.24	1.99	0.71	0.249	55.0%	9.3%	2.13	3.09	3.32	0.9

So Lowe is three years younger than Madson, and might have been better than Madson last year, and actually pitched through those years when Madson was trying to get healthy again. The easy answer is that Madson has been better over his career, but there’s also the question — what if Lowe hadn’t pitched through some of those injuries? What if, instead of pitching poorly and removing value from his overall line in 2013 and 2014, Lowe had been trying to get healthy on his own?

He still wouldn’t have the resume that Madson put up as a younger reliever. But maybe we would look at him differently than we do now. As it is, though, you have to be happy that the Lowe we do know got up off the mat and struck out Magglio Ordonez, and then nine years later, found his fastball once again. It makes for a good story, at least.