Written by Joe Lucia | 23 March 2010

Time for a look at the final member of the Braves starting rotation.. Derek Lowe was one of the most maligned members of the Braves in 2009, after posting a 4.67 ERA in the first year of his 4 year, $60 million dollar deal. Fans were calling for his head, and demanded that he be traded. Unfortunately, no team wanted to take on Lowe's massive contract, and Javier Vazquez was traded instead, which led to fans marching on Atlanta with pitchforks and torches looking for the head of Frank Wren. He survived however, and Lowe came into the spring of 2010 looking to rebound from his below average season. The thing is, Lowe wasn't as horrible as made out to be in 2009. Despite his high ERA, his FIP was only 4.06...not too good for your $15 million a year ace, but fine for an average member of the rotation. What most concerned fans were a combination of 3 factors: his 1 strikeout an inning drop in rate, his 1 walk an inning increase in rate, and his GB:FB dropping for the 3rd year in a row. The first point, his declining strikeout rate, can be identified as this: since becoming a starting pitcher in 2002 with Boston, Lowe has never been a strikeout pitcher. His rate in his 8 seasons as a starting pitcher has been 5.54 per 9. When you look at last season's strikeout numbers in comparison to his average as a starting pitcher, it looks less bad than when comparing to his last 2 seasons with the Dodgers, which were the best rates of his career since jumping to the rotation. In fact, Lowe's strikeout rate was actually lower in 2006 with the Dodgers than it was last season with the Braves. The second issue Braves fans were concerned with was Lowe's walk rate, which was not conducive to his low strikeout total. His walk rate in 2009 was 2.91, the highest mark since he was a member of the Red Sox in 2004. I'll admit the high walk rate last season does have me concerned, but that may have had something to do with the beginning and end of his season. In April, Lowe posted a walk rate of 3.72, while in September, the mark was 3.86. Those months though, were balanced by strikeout rates above 7. The real killer was June, where he posted both walk and strikeout ratios in the high 3's. That is not a good thing. An increased amount of home runs in June and September didn't help his FIP, either. Finally, there's the GB:FB ratio problem. Quite frankly, its a trend of declination that Braves fans should be concerned about. Lowe's been losing sink on his fastball since he peaked in 2006. Since that season, his ratio is declining, while his line drives and flyballs are increasing. As those numbers increase, the home runs increase. You get the point from there. The decrease in ratio is the most concerning thing about Lowe's 2009 season to me. However, there is a silver lining when looking at the opening day starter's 2009 year. His BABIP was an absurd .330, 31 points higher than his career norm. As a result, his BAA increased to a whopping .297, the worst mark of his career. If you take that BABIP down to a normal level of .300, the BAA decreases, and Lowe gets ridiculed less because his ERA doesn't look as ugly. One final note is that looking at Lowe's spring training peripherals, everything is looking great for 2010. I'm well aware that spring training stats mean less than nothing, but in 12 innings, Lowe has struck out 11 and walked none. Lowe's ERA has been hurt by the 2 home runs he's allowed, but I'm willing to overlook them in favor of the lack of walks and abundance of strikeouts. Its an encouraging sign to say the least, and I'm very curious to see how Lowe looks comes April 4th against the Cubs.