July 23, 200521 yr Jason Giambi had 4 home runs before July 1st. In fact, he only had ten TOTAL extra-base hits before July 1st (he had only SIX doubles in the first three months of the season). This month, he has a whopping 10 home runs and is hitting .400. He's had back-to-back 2-homer games. What i'm getting at is this....watching the way Giambi has suddenly and unexpectedly turned his season around, is anyone else terrified that we are making a colossal mistake trying to unload Lowell at a price of 25 cents on the dollar? I feel like the only way a deal like this works out for us is if we're confident that Lowell's career is completely over. But he's 31 years old, and his last two seasons were the best two seasons of his career. We don't know if Mike was on steroids, but we DO know that Giambi was on steroids, and clearly Giambi's career not over. Players just do not fall off the face of the planet like this without suffering an injury, do they? isn't this fairly unprecedented? the only person i can think of who experienced anything like this was Roberto Alomar when he went to the Mets, but he was older than Mike. Are we really ready to say that Mikey won't enjoy a Giambi-like resurgence in an Orioles uniform? Won't that make us look like fools?
July 23, 200521 yr According to MLB scouts, Mike is done. I don't know what they said about Giambi. Hopefully Lowell will start playing better, but it probably won't be in Florida.
July 23, 200521 yr Because I think this is a more realistic comparison: Paul Konerko: 2001: 32 HR, 99 RBI, .282 BA 2002: 27 HR, 104 RBI, .304 BA 2003: 18 HR, 65 RBI, .234 BA 2004: 41 HR, 117 RBI, .277 BA Mike Lowell: 2003: 32 HR, 105 RBI, .276 BA 2004: 27 HR, 85 RBI, .293 BA 2005: (on pace for) 9 HR, 69 RBI, .230 BA Essentially, it comes down to guys who you thought that you could pencil in for 25 HR's and 85 RBI no matter what happened, but then all of a sudden there's just an unexplained dropoff. Konerko got his head straightened out in an offseason and went back to raking. You could make the case that Lowell's dropoff was more expected than Konerko's (given the decline after last year's All-Star break), but they are very similar players to me having an inexplicably similar year.
July 24, 200521 yr An interesting comparison I heard on ESPNews the other day to Mike Lowell was Gary Gaetti. Gaetti was a solid player in his 20's, having his breakout over the course of back to back seasons. When he hit 30, he kind of hit a wall and dropped off. While he was a decent to solid player in his 30s, he never put up the numbers he had before. Some numbers for him: In his twenties Averages: .261/.313/.441, 23 HR, 85 RBI, 42 BB, 98 K, 31 2B Best Season: .287/.347/.518, 34 HR, 108 RBI, 52 BB, 108 K, 34 2B In his thirties Averages: .254/.300/.426, 19 HR, 70 RBI, 32 BB, 86 K, 22 2B Best Season: .261/.329/.518, 35 HR, 96 RBI, 47 BB, 91 K, 27 2B His best season in his 20s is eerily similar to Lowell's (.276/.350/.530, 32 HR, 105 RBI, 56 BB, 78 K, 27 2B) and overall averages (including his year at 30 years old) are also pretty similar: .276/.350/.530, 23 HR, 87 RBI, 51 BB, 78 K, 34 2B. The good news about this comparison is that Gaetti didn't fall completely off the Earth and was still a relatively solid player, however he wasn't a player I'd pay 8 million for. One can only hope that Mikey doesn't follow Gary's career path and can turn things around in a hurry.
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