Owens has had 9 starts in the majors so far.
The small sample numbers are okay, but nothing great:
51 IP, 4.41 ERA, 4.61 FIP.
7.24 K/9, 3.35 BB/9.
1.33 WHIP, .284 BABIP.
But in other ways, he's shown some real promise. In his last 2 starts, he's pitched into the 8th inning (3 times out of 9 starts he's done that.) In 5 of his 9 starts, he's allowed 0 or 1 run.
From Speier's 108 Stitches email yesterday:
"Henry Owens elicited 21 swings and misses on Tuesday...
Owens absorbed a loss on Tuesday. He considered that the defining aspect of his 7 1/3 inning performance, despite the enormous total of whiffs that he produced. The Rays spent much of the game in a state of total confusion about whether it was swinging at a fastball or changeup...
Still, what Owens showed on Tuesday, what he’s shown for much of his first exposure to the big leagues, offers a hint that he might indeed be part of a number of wins to come. That is chiefly thanks to the 21 swings and misses that he produced with just 90 pitches over his strikingly efficient outing.
First, some context for the raw whiffs: Owens’s 21 swings-and-misses were the most produced by any Red Sox pitcher this year, exceeding the 19 Clay Buchholz had.
That would be an impressive accomplishment in its own right, but Tuesday isn’t an isolated incident.
Owens had another start — against the Mariners — where he got 18 swings and misses, the third most by any Sox pitcher this year. He has achieved double-digit swing-and-miss totals in six of his last seven starts. Indeed, at an early point in his career, Owens is leaving hitters with an empty feeling in a fashion that ranks with some of the best pitchers in the game.
Owens has allowed a contact percentage — meaning the number of swings that resulted in contact — of 73.2 percent. So 26.8 percent of all swings has resulted in a miss. Here, according to Baseball-Reference.com, is a list of the lowest contact rates — and, hence, the highest swing-and-miss rates — of American League starting pitchers who have thrown at least 50 innings this year:
■ Chris Sale, 67.3 percent (footnote: this is ridiculous)
■ Chris Archer, 70.0 percent
■ Cole Hamels, 71.5 percent
■ Carlos Carrasco, 71.8 percent
■ Corey Kluber, 73.1 percent
■ Owens, 73.2 percent
In Owens’s first pro season of 2012 with Single A Greenville, he would get strikeouts in bunches only to encounter a single-inning hiccup that marred his ERA. But the fact that he could mix his fastball and changeup to baffle opponents suggested the foundation of a very good prospect. That notion took shape as Owens dominated in High A (2.92 ERA, .180 opponents’ average), Double A (2.44 ERA, .195 opponents’ average), and Triple A (.202 average, 3.03 ERA), mostly leaning on the fastball-changeup combination while developing his curveball and slider significantly.
Still, Owens is a different animal than the other pitchers who have elicited swings and misses with the volume that he has. Whereas most of them work regularly in the low- to mid-90s with their fastballs, Owens’s velocity has hovered mostly around 89-90 mph. That velocity gives him less margin for error than those other pitchers, which in turn may have contributed to Owens’s vulnerability and his 4.41 ERA."
Tim Britton on ProJo has a good article about his most recent start and his MLB progress so far.
The small sample numbers are okay, but nothing great:
51 IP, 4.41 ERA, 4.61 FIP.
7.24 K/9, 3.35 BB/9.
1.33 WHIP, .284 BABIP.
But in other ways, he's shown some real promise. In his last 2 starts, he's pitched into the 8th inning (3 times out of 9 starts he's done that.) In 5 of his 9 starts, he's allowed 0 or 1 run.
From Speier's 108 Stitches email yesterday:
"Henry Owens elicited 21 swings and misses on Tuesday...
Owens absorbed a loss on Tuesday. He considered that the defining aspect of his 7 1/3 inning performance, despite the enormous total of whiffs that he produced. The Rays spent much of the game in a state of total confusion about whether it was swinging at a fastball or changeup...
Still, what Owens showed on Tuesday, what he’s shown for much of his first exposure to the big leagues, offers a hint that he might indeed be part of a number of wins to come. That is chiefly thanks to the 21 swings and misses that he produced with just 90 pitches over his strikingly efficient outing.
First, some context for the raw whiffs: Owens’s 21 swings-and-misses were the most produced by any Red Sox pitcher this year, exceeding the 19 Clay Buchholz had.
That would be an impressive accomplishment in its own right, but Tuesday isn’t an isolated incident.
Owens had another start — against the Mariners — where he got 18 swings and misses, the third most by any Sox pitcher this year. He has achieved double-digit swing-and-miss totals in six of his last seven starts. Indeed, at an early point in his career, Owens is leaving hitters with an empty feeling in a fashion that ranks with some of the best pitchers in the game.
Owens has allowed a contact percentage — meaning the number of swings that resulted in contact — of 73.2 percent. So 26.8 percent of all swings has resulted in a miss. Here, according to Baseball-Reference.com, is a list of the lowest contact rates — and, hence, the highest swing-and-miss rates — of American League starting pitchers who have thrown at least 50 innings this year:
■ Chris Sale, 67.3 percent (footnote: this is ridiculous)
■ Chris Archer, 70.0 percent
■ Cole Hamels, 71.5 percent
■ Carlos Carrasco, 71.8 percent
■ Corey Kluber, 73.1 percent
■ Owens, 73.2 percent
In Owens’s first pro season of 2012 with Single A Greenville, he would get strikeouts in bunches only to encounter a single-inning hiccup that marred his ERA. But the fact that he could mix his fastball and changeup to baffle opponents suggested the foundation of a very good prospect. That notion took shape as Owens dominated in High A (2.92 ERA, .180 opponents’ average), Double A (2.44 ERA, .195 opponents’ average), and Triple A (.202 average, 3.03 ERA), mostly leaning on the fastball-changeup combination while developing his curveball and slider significantly.
Still, Owens is a different animal than the other pitchers who have elicited swings and misses with the volume that he has. Whereas most of them work regularly in the low- to mid-90s with their fastballs, Owens’s velocity has hovered mostly around 89-90 mph. That velocity gives him less margin for error than those other pitchers, which in turn may have contributed to Owens’s vulnerability and his 4.41 ERA."
Tim Britton on ProJo has a good article about his most recent start and his MLB progress so far.