Looking Back

Mike Lowell vs Scott Brosius


Given the way things go, the cup is always half full/empty when you look back at trades - it's not surprising it fills us with the thoughts of what could have been. Trading away Mike Lowell and keeping Scott Brosius was one of the toughest decisions to stomach back in the off-season of 1998-99. I have often wondered what Mike Lowell's career would have looked like as a Yankee - even if it means non Aaron Boone.

There's an excellent article here by Steven Goldman on the '98-'99 off season where the Yankees opted to trade away a younger layer they developed in favor of keeping a player who had played well for them.

Brian Cashman became the general manager of the Yankees on February 3, 1998. Within days, he consummated his first major deal, sending four prospects — one of them the former first round pick Eric Milton, then 22 — for All-Star second baseman Chuck Knoblauch. Cashman didn't have to weigh too many other player acquisitions during the course of that season, as the Yankees went 114–48 and cruised to a championship. That winter, though, Cashman had to make his first major choice between youth and experience. Still learning, and not calling all his own shots, Cashman chose according to the Steinbrenner/Yankee way.

This early crucible was centered on third base and Lowell. The incumbent third baseman, Scott Brosius, had declared free agency. Brosius was a terrific fielder and inconsistent hitter who had happened to hit .300 AVG /.371 OBA /.472 SLG in a season where nearly everything touched by the Yankees was blessed. The year before, he had hit .203/.259/.317. In 1996 he had hit .304/.393/.516. Most hitters will hit within a fairly narrow range, but not Brosius. There was no way of knowing what kind of hitter he would be. But at 32, a dangerous age for a ballplayer of middling skills, he was more likely to be down again than up.

Also in 1998, Lowell had gotten his first cup of coffee in the majors, appearing with the Yankees on September 13. He had been a 20th-round draft pick in 1995, which meant that the Yankees, as well as every other team, thought of him as little more than filler for their minor league rosters. He did not prove the prediction wrong right away, but began a strengthening program in 1996 that would result in more power. The next year, as a 23-year-old playing in Double-A, he exploded, batting .344/.438/.561 with 15 home runs. Promoted to Triple-A halfway through the season, he batted .276/.348/.562 with another 15 home runs. In the winter of 1997, the Yankees traded pitcher Kenny Rogers for Brosius, who had largely been an everyday utility player for the Oakland A's — he was almost always in the lineup, but often at a position other than third.

Lowell was blocked, but only temporarily, as Brosius's contract had just a year to run. Returning to Triple-A Columbus during the 1998 season, Lowell had another strong season, batting .304/.351/.535 and knocking another 26 home runs. He had shown that his offensive improvement was for real. His defense was considered to be acceptable. The Yankees were, as ever, not a young team.

Anyway, the Yankees signed up Brosius for 3 more years, won 2 more World Series and got as far as Game 7 in another. However, Brosius was a mediocre hitter in 1999-2001, nowhere near the "300 AVG /.371 OBA /.472 SLG" hitter he was in 1998.

If you read the article Steven Goldman goes on to point out that trading away Lowell was a mistake in retrospect, but that the decision could not have been known at the time. There's an element of truth to this, but the article got me thinking: If we applied what we know now, what kind of answers would we get?

So without further-a-do, here is Scott Brosius' career stats.

What pops out are how good he was in 1996 and 1998. Cutting to the chase, the career graph of his OBP looks like this.

And his career graph of his career AVE has a similar shape. In other words, his OBP was highly dependent on which way his batting average went. In fact his walk rate was below average for most of his career except for 1996. Which leads me to this next point, his BABIP line.

BABIP: Batting Average on Balls In Play, is the flip-side of DIPS theory as discovered by Voros McCracken in 2001 - 3 years after the Brosius contract was handed out. In short, it measures how lucky or unlucky you are with the bounce of the ball, once hit. You might hit it to a fielder, you might hit it into the gap. On average, it's about .300 across the league.
Turns out, Brosius was considerably 'luckier' than his career norm as well as the league in 1996 and 1998.

In fact, if you take out '96 and '98, Brosius' BABIP ranges between .214 and .276 during the rest of his career. If nothing else this indicates that he was a slowish runner and/or played in pitchers' parks. Clearly, the high water marks of .336 and.338 were anomalous by about 60 points to a hundred.
So if you took those 60 points out of the "300 AVG /.371 OBA /.472 SLG", you're looking at a .240/.311/.412 sort of player.
In 1999, Brosius turned in a very similar .247/.304/.417.
Yikes! That was no joke. Steven Goldman goes on to write:

In retrospect, it appears that the Yankees were simply traveling the convoluted road that would lead to Alex Rodriguez, but that was not predestined. If not for a contract snag, Rodriguez would today be with the Red Sox. Good luck rescued the Yankees from their initial decision to choose Brosius over Lowell (though the cost was high in resources spent), as well as other similarly incorrect lessons: When the Yankees won two World Series in spite of Brosius's decline, it seemed to inculcate the idea that the team could make the same sloppy decisions it always had, favoring mediocre veterans over promising youth, and still prosper. With no championships since 2000 and a recent sea change in the way they treat young players, it seems safe to say the Yankees know better now.

So the Yankees were sucked in by even the high OBP, which was highly dependent on his BA, which was highly dependent on the bounce of the ball-in-play. Why didn't they pick this? Well, it's because DIPS theory really didn't come about until after the turn of the millennium. It's hard to fault the Yankees for wanting to keep the guy with the .371 OBP given the information at the time. Plus, you could look at it as the Yankees having gotten very lucky to have had 2 of Brosius' fluke seasons. But it still rankles; and you do wonder if the same choices came up again, whether they'd make the right call for the right reasons, or the wrong reasons.

As for the trade iself, the truly telling part is this page.

Lowell would have been just as good a hitter in 99, and '01, and been an upgrade in 2000, not to mention a pretty good hitter since then except for 2005 where he produced like Brosius in his ordinary years.

What's interesting otherwise is that they both had significant down years at age 31, but that would just be coincidence.