Scouting Ben Rowen

MLB.com

     Earlier this week, the Mets signed Ben Rowen, to a minor league deal with an invite to spring training. On the surface, signing a 28 year old minor league journeyman might look like a meh signing, but I believe that this could be an important signing for our bullpen. 
     
     Rowen is 6'4 and weighs 200 pounds, which would classify him as a tall, lanky type of pitcher. And at that point, the normality with Rowen abruptly ends. When I first heard of the signing, I didn't think much of Rowen until I realized that he is quite the soft tosser. In fact, during his short stints in the majors, he averaged slower than 80 miles per hour on his fastball. 

     Per fangraphs, that would have been the slowest average fastball velocity for a reliever going back to 2013, and it wouldn't have been close. So yeah, that basically means that if Ben Rowen makes the majors, he would become the slowest throwing Major League pitcher (Adam Dunn and other hitters don't count) since Tim Wakefield retired in 2011. 

     However, there is a reason for his fast (or maybe slow) balls being the speed they're at, and it's the same reason he's so intriguing. That reason is that he is a pure submarine thrower. 

    Due to his low fastball velocity and throwing a slider as his only other pitch, it is unlikely Rowen will profile as a high strikeout pitcher. However, he won't need to, because as we know, a submarine pitcher's arm slot is far lower than the traditional overhand pitching delivery. Due to this, the pitchers arm slot will be much more difficult to pick up and thus, mess with the hitters timing.

 

     As Rowen showed throughout his minor league career, he had an affinity for keeping his walks down, and also keeping the ball on the ground. 

MLBFarm.com

     I mentioned in a previous article how the Mets infield defense may hurt groundball pitchers next season. The thing about that though is that due to how Rowen's low arm slot will spend more time messing up hitters timing than most pitchers, the grounders he would give up will more likely be softly hit grounders. 

     That means despite how the team's infield didn't have the best range, the grounders Rowen will give up would be soft enough that range won't be a problem. At the very least, he will avoid giving up homers. You know, the more I watch, talk about him and see how he gets lots of grounders and limits homers, Rowen kinda reminds me of Chad Bradford. Hell, they even have almost the exact same build. 

     In short, I don't see Ben Rowen becoming a superstar. In spite of that, I believe that he can definitely become a helpful reliever in a Mets bullpen that has some question marks.