Herald

The only mention of this that I can recall was this blurb in Baseball America:



Lowrie put up a .310/.340/.476/.816 line in his first 17 games before he was sent down on May 11. After returning July 12, his line the rest of the season was .248/.339/.385/.724. And from August 18 on: .195/.301/.305/.606.

Lowrie's pronounced relative platoon splits didn't change. Prior to his demotion, Lowrie went 4-for-9 vs LHP with a walk, a double and a homer. Those he faced: Gabbard, Saunders, Howell, Miller, Ryan & Perkins. Against RHP he managed just 3 extra-base hits.

His splits before his demotion:

As RHH (11 PA) - .444/.500/.889/1.389
As LHH (37 PA) - .273/.297/.364/.661

And after his return:

As RHH ( 83 PA)- .324/.398/.479/.877
As LHH (175 PA) - .211/.310/.340/.650

Overall:

As RHH (212 PA) - .338/.409/.525/.934
As LHH ( 94 PA) - .222/.308/.344/.653

His pre-injury splits obviously come with a Small Sample Size caveat. But it's worth noting that for a LHH, the left wrist takes on far more stress than the right as it adducts and pushes the bat through the zone. I'm sure the injury hampered his hitting from both sides of the plate to some degree, but I'd surmise it affected his PA's from the left more than those from the right.

Despite his pronounced fade down the stretch, I was very encouraged by his rookie season. Knowing that there's a reason behind his tail-off, and that it will be isolated and treated over the winter, reinforces my belief that this is the guy I want starting at shortstop next season.

I'm glad to hear it. Even if it has no baseball merit (though it probably does) it makes me at least feel better until next year.

If it was a factor, it didn't necessarily manifest in his K rate:
2007 AA: 17.2% of ABs
2007 AAA: 20.6% of ABs
2008 AAA: 21.7% of ABs
2008 MLB: 26.2% of ABs

To my eye the problem was his swing from the left side. He drops his left shoulder and has a loopy uppercut. This works better if you have a lot of power but he's more of a gap hitter who should be focusing on line drives. RH'ed power pitchers responded by pitching him fastballs up in the zone that, at first, he was all over and eventually he just couldn't catch up to. This was basically Tito's stated reason for starting Cora in G7. Perhaps the reason Jed caught up to them in August but not in Sep/Oct was because of the wrist? One can hope. I still think he's better off fixing that swing and coming down on the ball a bit more.

I agree with 'dog though, barring the availability of a star I want to see him starting at SS next year.

I was saying to someone at Game 5 that he really needed to go see someone about his swing. He doesn't have enough power to hit 30 HR but he also doesn't put enough topspin on the ball to get line drive hits. Right now He is the king of the 325 foot well hit but ultimately easy to play fly ball.

I hope he didn't catch that disease from Kotsay. Seriously, it became quite easy to see why Kotsay never hit more than 17 HRs.

They should list the players who were NOT injured. Seems like that would be a much shorter list.

I don't know. If I remember right (I'll have to go back to his initial scouting reports from BA), his slow bat has always been his weakness.

You're not remembering right. That's the type of thing I would have remembered. I just checked all the handbooks and they never mentioned his bat speed. There was some concern about his swing mechanics and how he'd adjust to wood.

The problem is his swing not his bat speed.

Even with his ups and downs, Lowrie's at bats filled me with more anticipation than any Sox SS since OCab.

I did look forward to Edgah's and Lugo's initial Sox at bats also, but those proved to be empty, unfulfilled promises.

A left wrist injury could help explain Lowrie's extreme platoon splits. I'd think it would affect his lefty swing more.

I dislike Errorgar as much as anyone but he basically did the same thing as Lowrie, he killed lefties and was owned by righties. It was not as obvious perhaps because he wasn't a switch hitter.

small non-displaced fracture in his left wrist

I'd say that justifies a revised thread title.

Hate to apply 20/20 hindsight, but why wouldn't they have given him an MRI earlier in the season? The All-Star break would have been an ideal opportunity for this. Then perhaps they could have gone out and found a stopgap not named Alex Cora.

Granted Lowrie probably wasn't bitching about the pain, but the injury occurred during a PawSox game. Team officials obviously saw it, so they can't use the "we didn't know he was hurt" excuse. You'd think it would be standard procedure to give players every test possible to assess any hidden or minor injuries like this one that might get worse over time.

Addressing the issue certainly would have kept Francona from having to repeatedly use that insipid line about Cora giving them a better chance against hard-throwing RHP, which implied a lack of confidence in Lowrie.

We can add that to the list of injuries the Sox were dealing with ans still took the Rays to seven games before losing in the ALCS.

It's not that I am using injuries as an excuse, just that they happened and I really feel well about what happened this season when I consider everything.

Back on topic, even without an injury, I always thought that Alex Cora was the biggest waste of space in the roster, especially since he actually made more than a few starts in the regular season and then started Game 7! Had they know about this injury (I mean its extent) and placed Lowrie on the DL, what the hell would the Sox have done? Put Cora in as a full time starter? (shuddering at the thought)

I hope this now puts to rest any notion that Lowrie isn't up to the job. He was an above avg. SS in his rookie season playing with a broken wrist. If Lugo had a broken wrist, I'd rather have Eddie Gaedel start at SS.

As I implied above, perhaps they could have been more aggressive in finding a different alternative. Maybe they pull the trigger on the Uribe deal. Or they pick up Juan Castro from the Reds before the Orioles do. Perhaps they grab a good-hit, no-field pending free agent like Cristian Guzman. Or better yet, they find a way to swing Clint Barmes from the Rockies.

The options are limited only by the imagination.

It simply comes down to an injured Lowrie was better than all the healthy alternatives.

I can't really get upset about this season. This team was more broken down than the 2006 team and the Red Sox came a couple of runs from the World Series. That is ridiculous depth. I think it only bodes well for the team going forward. I don't see a lot of drastic changes this offseson for this team because of it.

Guzman signed an extension with the Nats, actually.

I hope Lowrie has a nice recovery and I hope his issues from the left side of the plate were magnified by the pain and possible inability to properly grip.

That said, I don't think a small non-displaced fracture is really all that much more painful or debilitative than the sprain was, and the sprain wasn't enough to get the guy to even wince to the point that the coaches felt he couldn't contribute. Maybe we will find out more down the road, but this just seems like a really minor injury. He didn't even have significant bruising, AFAIK. I don't have 100% faith in the Sox medical staff, but I have enough faith that they would have looked at it if they thought it was a major problem. They probably thought it was a minor sprain and Jed, a rookie cruising on adrenaline, probably repeatedly told them it was no problem. So I guess what I'm saying is first that it's hard to find fault here, and second that I don't think this healing turns him into an 800 OPS LHH overnight. He doesn't need to come back that far to be a good player, but the tone of the globe article suggests that the only reason he struggled as a LHH is because of the wrist.

Here's a question though, if it was all in the wrist and the wrist affected his LH swing, then why not try to hit RH all the time?

Guzman also has been wildly inconsistent. Outside of a great year in 2007 (and a decent one in 08), he's been pretty lousy with the stick. In fact, even with those two years, he's at 79 for career OPS+.

Guzman himself isn't an option, but it is worth pointing out that even a seemingly "good hitting" option like him is unlikely to in fact provide much offense going forward. Even with a broken wrist, in his rookie year, Lowrie provided decent offense from SS (ops+ of 90, RC of 4.7).

I'm kind of surprised no one has mentioned this before, but according to minor league splits.com, Lowrie's career numbers vs. RHP (ie as a LHH) are better than those vs. a LHP. He put up a .284/.351/.465 vs. LHP and a .288/.393/.439 vs. RHP. So he was every bit as good of a hitter from the LH side, with a bit more patience and a little less power, which is counter to what we saw at the ML level this year (.122 IsoP as a LHH vs. .187 IsoP as a RHH). Moreover, looking at his K rates further underlines this point. In the minors, his K rates were nearly identical from either side, at 18.1% as a LHH and 18.3% as a RHH. this year with the Sox, he struck out in 17.5% of his ABs as a RHH, but a gynormous 30% as a LHH. This tells me that, as with his injury plagued season in Wilmington in 2006, Lowrie played through pain that clearly impacted him from the left side. The wrist seemed to both sap his power from the left side and impact his swing such that his K rate spiked while his BA tanked. Now I don't expect him to be the .934 OPS stud he was from the right side going forward, but it is not unreasonable to assume that a fully healthy Jed Lowrie will put up something along the lines of a .285/.370/.440 sort of line which, along with his adequate defense, would make him an extremely valuable commodity going forward and a huge upgrade on anyone who has played SS in Boston since #5 was here.