At the start of the season, the GROTA staff did something similar to what we're doing now - we wrote articles about the individual Cub players who looked as though they were going to play a bigger part in the season.  I also made photoshops of every one of them, many of which failed to make a whole lot of sense - not that it's entirely my fault.  Guys like Bob Howry fail to inflame the imagination.

Howry is just a boring looking guy.  Nothing stands out.  He doesn't have a bushy foo.  He has no tribal tattoos.  He doesn't look like he shived the guy who played J. Jonah Jameson while guest appearing on Oz.  He's just really, really boring.

Maybe he is aware of that fact.  Maybe Howry realizes just how boring he really is.  Maybe that's why he decided to make things interesting this season, which he proceeded to do by earning the nickname "Gas Can."  In other words, Howry was terrible all year long.

Take a look at this line: From July 23rd until August 14th, Howry pitched in 9.2 innings of work.  In those 9.2 innings, he gave up 15 hits for 10 earned runs.  Of those 15 hits, 5 were not contained by the ballpark.  Can you imagine if a starting pitcher lost 33% of all hits to the bleachers?  A guy like Ryan Dempster, who gave up 174 hits in 204.2 innings of work would have surrendered 57 homeruns.

Howry was almost that bad throughout his entire season.  In his 70.2 innings of work he surrendered 13 homeruns, a fairly unusual amount for a reliever.  If Howry had matched Dempster's workload, that would have equated to 38 homeruns and an awful lot of Cub losses.

Make no mistake that I'm glad Howry was a Cub, though.  Before 2008, he was a reliable arm in the bullpen, and even this year he ate a lot of innings for a 97 win team.  The problem was twofold - he had a heavy workload before the All Star Break (46 innings of work, 4.50 ERA) which may have contributed to his poor performance after the break (24.2 IP, 6.93 ERA), and he's just of age to lose it as a reliever.  Howry's in his mid 30's, a problem that usually means Game Over for most relievers.

Regardless, he is now a free agent, and it is rumored that Howry will find a home in San Francisco.  We wish him the best of luck in his new digs, and we hope that the guy he's replaced by can step up and deliver a more consistent performance.  But here's to you, Bob Howry, you magnificiently boring bastard!

"Buwaaaahahahaha...the ultimate power, it is mine!"  Howry, stepped back from the table, admiring his handiwork.  The tiny worm looked back up at him blank faced.  Had it known what its next home would be, it surely would have found a way to express concern.

"Yes master, but I wish you would reconsider," lisped Igor as he hobbled across the laboratory.  "We could control the president of the United States.  We could use it to rob a bank.  We could truly wield ultimate power."

Howry shook his head, looking down at his hunchbacked little friend with just a tinge of pity.  "I thought I'd made this clear, Igor: I just want to pitch.  It's simple; I just slip this little worm in Lou's ear and I'm control his every thought.  No biggie."

"AND SO WE WILL HAVE HIM MAKE YOU CLOSER!  YOU WILL BE A GOD!" Igor cried, thrusting his arms to the sky.  "A GOD!"

"But I just want to pitch."

"No, you can be the CLOOOOSEEEERRR!"

"No, I just want to pitch.  I just don't want to be released.  Hell, my fastball isn't what it used to be and my slider is garbage.  I just want to pitch.  Leave the godding to God."

Igor grudgingly slumped away, muttering under his breath:

"...my last master was, like, a 100 times better."

This is just some puttering around with Excel, the database and my plotter. This isn't supposed to be mistaken for serious analysis.

That said - this morning I was discussing Bob Howry over at Bleed Cubbie Blue, and we got to discussing the fact that when Bob Howry is pitching, hitters are batting .320 on ground balls. When other people pitch, the league average is something like .230. This is a large part of Howry's problem - he actually has the lowest walk rate in the bullpen right now. But is this really Howry's fault?

There really isn't much evidence that Howry is pitching drastically differently this year - his ground ball/fly ball/line drive splits are all right in line with his career numbers. So is his velocity - he's throwing more sliders than he has in years past, for what it's worth.

So - and my play-by-play data for the season only covers through about the first week of August - I did a plot of ground balls hit off Howry. Blue dots are outs, red dots are hits:

Tell me what you see here.

Described as an annual "farm tour", Cubs GM Jim Hendry attended the I-Cubs win last night over New Orleans.  If I were a talented player, perhaps a player who has already seen major league action this year, and currently holds a major league batting average over .370, I would be heartened to know that the Big Boss is here to see me rake.

Daryle Ward has a .100 batting average as a pinch hitter.  He cannot run nor play the field.  If he manages to get on base, we almost always have to employ yet another bench player to run for him.  Last night he got a sac fly to drive in a run, and it seemed like a major victory for him.  Like the scene in "Little Big League", when Billy Hayward's favorite player broke a 0-for-21 slump with a seeing-eye squibber to right...it's time to put the Fat Kangaroo out of his misery.

Jimmy, bring home more than just some funnel cakes and beef jerky from your trip.  Bring us some Micah Hofpauir, and some bullpen help while you're at it.  I'm stickin' the fork in Bob Howry.  He's done.

Lou Piniella is a showman.  He understands the value of giving fans their money's worth - just look at the fits he's thrown the last two seasons, both of which resulted in winning streaks by the Cubs and joy by the Cubs fans.  Maybe that's why Lou insists on pitching to Carlos Lee, and, even more insanely, perhaps that's why Piniella continues to use Bob Howry.  

After all, any time the Cubs appear to be pulling away with a big lead, Lou can keep the fans in the game by trotting out Howry, who tends to respond to the call by lobbing a few batting practice pitches to the opposition, who often respond by launching new satellites into the atmosphere.  

It's good drama, it's great television, but it's bad baseball.

Howry has been a walking, talking gas can.  In the month of July, Howry threw 13 innings of work and surrendered 14 hits.  Of those 14 hits, more than 25% (4 in total) were homeruns.  He had an ERA of 6.75, and it's only gotten worse as the month progressed.

In his last 9 outings, Howry has thrown 8.1 innings.  He's allowed 9 earned runs off of 4 homeruns.  3 of the last 7 hits he's given up were not contained by the ballpark.

I submit to you that he's not worth a draft pick.  He's worth a ticket out of town.  Hendry needs to pull the trigger, as the Cubs just aren't a good team with Howry in the bullpen. 

I went to the game tonight, and brought along the goat camera. See Kurt's write up for the game recap. Here's the pics.

Geovany Soto fouls one off. See that white streak? That's the baseball.

How many White Sox does it take to catch a pop fly?

Carlos Quentin - swing and a miss!

Javier Vazquez couldn't get the ball over the plate tonight.

Aramis Ramirez' bat is too hot to handle right now.

Aramis Ramirez rounds third base after his fourth home run of the series.

Bobby Howry came in to mop up after eight great Ryan Dempster innings.