puzzling stat lines:

Andrew Bowman

2010: era/5.16 innings pitched/66.1 hits allowed/64 hr allowed/2 strikeouts/51 bb allowed/46

2011: era/4.50 innings pitched/68.0 hits allowed/62 hr allowed/2 strikeouts/81 bb allowed/56

I've never read much about this guy, but after looking at his stat line I was wondering what the scouting reports on him were. First thing I noticed is that he walks way too many batters to be a trusted reliever at the MLB level, at least for now. However combining his two year totals reveals he hasn't been hit significantly, giving up less than a hit per inning while striking out nearly a hitter per inning.

Additionally i thought it was interesting that despite his apparent wildness he hasn't surrendered many hits. To me this is odd, because without seeing the pitcher I assume that this wildness is going to get the pitcher into hitter's counts much more frequently than a guy with better command. For example, I wonder how often Bowman had to take something off or serve up a drive-able cookie to the hitter just in order to avoid walking him.

Once again, despite the wildness, in 134 ip, he has only surrendered 4 hrs over the last two seasons, this last year coming in what I thought was supposed to be a hitter friendly environment of Bakersfield and the Cal league. his groundball tendencies and hr allowed would seem to be a fit playing in GABP, assuming they could be maintained climbing the ladder.

as a reliever, a guy with those overall numbers probably isn't worth mentioning but I just thought they were a bit puzzling and mysterious. What is his deal? Is he a trick pitcher? Ineffectively/effectively wild? Is he worth a speculative wager as a long shot?

What's mysterious about his numbers?

Bowman's clearly ineffectively wild at this point. He apparently has good enough stuff to miss bats in A ball, and shows some nice groundball tendencies, but no one survives with that kind of walk rate.

Just looks to me like he's got good stuff that he has trouble controlling.