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Derek Christopher Lowe

Born: June 1, 1973; Dearborn, MI  Height: 6'6"  Weight: 214
Bats: Right  Throws: Right  Position: Pitcher  #32


Derek Lowe



Career Stats

More career stats from baseball-reference.com

W-L ERAGGSCGSHSVIPHRERBBSO
1997Seattle2-4 6.96 12 9 0 0 0 53.0 59 43 41 20 39
Boston 0-2 3.38 8 0 0 0 0 16.0 15 6 6 3 13
1998 Boston 3-9 4.02 63 10 0 0 4 123.0 126 65 55 42 77
1999 Boston 6-3 2.63 74 0 0 0 15 109.1 84 35 32 25 80
2000 Boston 4-4 2.56 74 0 0 0 42** 91.1 90 27 26 22 79
2001 Boston 5-10 3.53 67 3 0 0 24 91.2 103 39 36 29 82
2002 Boston 21-8 2.58 32 32 1 1 0 219.2 166 65 63 48 127
2003 Boston 17-7 4.47 33 33 1 0 0 203.1 216 113 101 72 110
2004 Boston 14-12 5.42 33 33 0 0 0 182.2 224 138 110 71 105

** Tied for league lead


Career Notes

•  Derek Lowe graduated from Edsel Ford High School in Dearborn, Michigan, where he was an All-League player in baseball, basketball, soccer, and golf.

•  Lowe was selected by the Seattle Mariners in the 8th round of the 1991 draft.

•  After playing the 1992 season with the short season class-A Bellingham (WA) Mariners, Lowe was named the #6 prospect in the Northwest League by Baseball America.

•  He was promoted to full season class-A Riverside (CA) Pilots in 1993, and started for the ML Mariners in a spring exhibition game against the Milwaukee Brewers in Las Vegas.

•  After spending 1994 and 1995 in AA, Derek was promoted to AAA Tacoma in 1996. On August 16, 1996, he threw 8 no-hit innings against Edmonton, before allowing a single to lead off the ninth. He finished the day with a 7-0 win in a one-hitter.

•  Lowe began the 1997 season in Tacoma, but was soon called up to the majors. His major league debut was in Toronto on April 26, 1997, when he took the loss despite giving up only one run in 3.1 innings of relief.

•  His first major league start was May 27, 1997, in Minnesota. It was a no-decision with 5 IP, 6 H, 4 ER, 2 BB, and 6 K. He earned his first major league win the following week in Detroit.

•  On July 31, 1997, Derek Lowe was traded along with catcher Jason Varitek to the Boston Red Sox for right-handed reliever Heathcliff Slocumb. Lowe made his Red Sox debut on September 1, 1997, in Montreal.

•  Lowe began the 1998 season with an 0-7 record as a starter, and earned his first Red Sox win in relief in July. He pitched out of the bullpen for the remainder of the season, and had a streak of five consectutive scoreless appearances in September.

•  In 1999, he became an effective reliever, tying Tim Wakefield with 15 saves, and limiting right-handed batters to a .189 batting average and lefties to .235. He pitched 109 innings for the Sox that year, becoming the first Red Sox reliever to throw more than 100 innings since Greg Harris in 1993.

•  Derek Lowe was the Red Sox closer in 2000, and tied with Detroit's Todd Jones to lead the league with 42 saves. He was named to the All-Star Game that year, and pitched the sixth inning, retiring three of the four batters he faced.

•  Lowe struggled as closer at the beginning of 2001, and by the end of the season he was being converted back to a starter. He had 24 saves at that point, and became the first pitcher with 20 or more saves before making his first start of the season since Mike Marshall of Minnesota in 1979.

•  Derek Lowe had a very successful 2002 season as a starter. He threw a no-hitter at Fenway against Tampa Bay in April, and finished the year with 21 wins. He was the starting pitcher for the American League in the All-Star Game, and was third in Cy Young voting. He also became the first pitcher in baseball history to have a 40+ save season before having a 20+ win season.

•  In the 2003 Division Series, Derek pitched in relief when Game 1 went extra innings. He pitched seven strong innings in his Game 3 start, allowing only one run as the Sox staved off elimination. In Game 5, he again entered in relief, and closed out the win in the clinching game as the Sox beat the A's.

•  Lowe continued his postseason dominance in 2004. He started the Division Series in the bullpen, and pitched the tenth inning of Game 3. When David Ortiz's walkoff homer clinched the series, Lowe was credited with the win. In the ALCS, he started Game 4, and then on only two days' rest (a rainout had moved everything up and taken away the travel day) pitched a gem in Game 7, as the Sox came back from an 0-3 deficit to beat the Yankees. In the World Series, Lowe pitched seven strong innings in Game 4, earning the win. The Red Sox won their first World Championship in 86 years, and Derek Lowe became the first player in history to pick up the win in three series-clinching games in the same postseason.





Diary of a No-Hitter
A first-hand account of Derek Lowe's gem

2004 World Champions - Derek Lowe
A look at D-Lowe's contributions to the 2004 World Series win




New Lowe for Rays
Derek Lowe pitches first Fenway no-hitter in 37 years, "embarrassing" Tampa Bay

By Marc Topkin, St. Petersburg Times Staff Writer

They started around the third or fourth inning, figuring they needed any help they could get. As each batter stepped up, the Rays talked more and more about Boston pitcher Derek Lowe and the white zero under the H on the top line of the Fenway Park scoreboard.

"You're trying anything you can do to jinx him," Brent Abernathy said. "You know how the saying is that you don't say anything to a pitcher about a no-hitter? Well, we're in the dugout, "Somebody tell this guy he's got a no-hitter. Somebody bust up the no-hitter.' We were just trying to mention it as much as possible."

As the game went on, as hitter after hitter trudged back to the Rays dugout, as the frustration mounted and the desperation grew, the conversation turned livelier.

"We were trying to get the baseball gods to work for us," Toby Hall said. "But they weren't listening today."

Or maybe they just couldn't hear over the raucous cheers coming from the old ballpark. Lowe, who had some karma of his own working, finished what he started, completing the no-hitter that made a brutal 10-0 Rays defeat hurt even more. It was the first no-hitter against the Rays, the first at Fenway since 1965.

"It's bad," Steve Cox said. "It's really embarrassing. ... You really don't want a no-hitter thrown against you. That means no one in the clubhouse got a hit. And that's not a good feeling."

D-Lowe makes it to Cooperstown

Derek Lowe's hat and shoes and a baseball from the no-hitter are on display at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

The combination wasn't good for the Rays from the start. Lowe, a powerful 6-foot-6 former closer, always had done well against the Rays and had started this season strong. The Rays were the worst-hitting road team in the majors, don't play well in the cold (55 degrees at first pitch) and were barely 15 hours removed from a paltry four-hit effort. When Lowe set down the first six, with only Randy Winn's drive to center leaving the infield, it didn't seem that unusual. When Brent Abernathy walked on a 3-1 pitch to open the third, there was no way to know he would be the only Ray to reach base safely.

"You never envision that," Abernathy said. "But after that at-bat I knew it was going to be a long day, simply because he had unbelievable movement on his sinker today. All I saw that at-bat were five sinkers, and it was ridiculous how much he had it moving."

Lowe, though, was hardly impressed. He went up to the clubhouse after the inning to work in front of a mirror with pitching coach Tony Cloninger.

"Mechanically, I felt terrible," Lowe said. "It's a game of adjustments, and you've got to keep making them. As the game went on, you get in a good rhythm, a good flow, and once you get the mechanics out of your head and just worry about making pitches, that's when good things happen."

As the game went on, the rest of the Red Sox tried their best to help. Manager Grady Little made sure to stand in the same spot in the dugout. Catcher Jason Varitek stopped talking to Lowe. Other teammates ignored him. Pedro Martinez said a prayer. New owner John Henry refused to stand for the final inning since he'd been seated the first eight.

Lowe, though, said he barely noticed any of the superstitious activity.

"I'm just like a goofball," he said. "I just go out there and pitch."

That was enough against the Rays, who couldn't make anything happen. Of 28 batters, 13 grounded out and six struck out. Winn's ball carried to deep left-center, but the wind kept it from reaching the wall and Rickey Henderson made a routine catch. Cox had probably the hardest hit ball, a liner down the rightfield line in the fourth that Trot Nixon caught on the full run.

"You know a guy's on top of his game when there's that few balls hit solidly," Abernathy said.

"He kept everyone off balance," Hall said. "He had a power sinker, he had a changeup, he had a curve or slider or whatever, he might have even thrown a damn knuckleball, I don't know."

With the game out of hand after Boston made quick work of rookie Delvin James and took a 7-0 lead in the third, all 32,837 fans on the crisp, sun-splashed afternoon were pulling for Lowe and were on their feet in full roar when he came out, after a long Boston eighth, for the final inning.

"You figure someone's going to get a hit," Hall said. "Law of averages."

The first batter was Russ Johnson, who took a strike then hit a soft liner to second. Next was rookie Felix Escalona, who swung and missed at a breaking ball then hit a slider into shallow left-center that Henderson ran down. "I was kind of scared," Varitek said of Escalona's at-bat. "But once that happened I had a good feeling about the next at-bat."

Lowe still wasn't sure.

"I'm such a huge golf guy, and I (was thinking) of Tiger Woods at the Masters where he says, 'Finish the deal.' You've got to finish it. That's what I kept telling myself," Lowe said. "You've got eight innings, 8 2/3 is good, but no one remembers 8 2/3, you know? ... You've got to be able to finish it."

Jason Tyner, who made the first out nearly 2 1/2 hours earlier, was the 28th and final batter Lowe would face. "I knew from about the seventh inning I'd be the last guy if no one got a hit," Tyner said. "I went up there expecting to get a hit."

Tyner quickly got down 0-2, took a ball high and outside, then hit a routine grounder to second. Just like that, with his 98th pitch, Lowe had done it. He swung his fist through the air and soon was mobbed by his teammates.

"I don't know if it could get any better," Lowe said.

"Maybe when you sit back and watch the game tomorrow or in the offseason and see how it unfolded, but right now they just took your hat and shoes to go to the Hall of Fame. As a kid you never think you're going to get in there."

Copyright © 2002 St. Petersburg Times.
This article was published April 28, 2002.



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