This is getting ridiculous. I don’t remember Bottenfield all that well, since I was twelve and basically concerned with Local God Mark McGwire and Favorite Player Ray Lankford at the time, but I can’t imagine he ever looked this brilliant on the mound. The stats certainly don’t compare:

         IP    H  ER   K  BB  HR   ERA   FIP
BLOOP   51.0  43  13  33  15   2  2.29  3.30
BOTT    44.1  45  23  30  20   4  4.67  4.37

The geniusometer, obviously, remains broken–this has gone from a weird gamble to one of those hidden-in-plain-sight moments of innovation that makes people rich. There were a lot of reasons to think this was a ridiculous idea going in–Looper was a decent reliever with a bad K rate who couldn’t get lefties out–but Duncan saw that he was built like a starter, and apparently very good with whatever foreign substance he’s using on his breaking pitches, and banked on those things winning out.

Bottenfield had a few good starts up to this point, including a six inning, eight K performance in a July 13 loss. (Royce Clayton’s third home run wasn’t enough and Jeff Brantley from blowing the save; Bobby “I was still playing in 1998?” Witt gave up a go-ahead single to (the Reds’) Eduardo Perez in extras. You may hate this current team, but that’s just an ugly game summary.) But in general he was what you’d expect of a longtime swingman who’s pushed into the rotation full time: lots of not-quite-enough starts, seven innings/five runs or five innings/two runs but rarely pitching well and long at the same time. His game log is like a trip through the irregular bin at the outlet mall. You’ll find some wearable clothes, but they’d be even better if the neckhole weren’t sewn shut, or they’d gotten the zipper all the way on.

Looper, though, has become a completely different pitcher. There’s that splitter, first of all, which he’s used to catch a number of tough lefties swinging and missing for strikeouts. Last year he had a pitch that was a splitter, but only because Mike Shannon kept calling it that–it just ran out of steam near the plate, and the best case scenario involved it falling in the dirt for a ball. This one dives out of the strike zone with a tailing motion that really characterizes New Looper; every pitch seems to run away from lefties, whereas previously it was him running away from the lefties.

I’d be worried, somewhat, about his future success if that were all he’d added. It’s a great pitch, but I noticed several Padres hitters were getting pretty good about taking it. In the future more hitters might lay off the splitter, but his new fastball is what will make the biggest difference going forward.

It’s almost Carpenter-esque, in the way it tails away from lefties, and though he’s never had problems with righties he’s gotten it inside on them to pretty good results. It doesn’t at all resemble the old/busted generic setup man fastball he had last year–mid-90s, straight, located clumsily at the corners. New Hotness started off in the mid-80s, but lately he’s gotten it up to the low 90s without losing the movement that’s turned his heretofore stagnant career around.

I’m pretty convinced that Looper can be a solid starter in the majors. Will he keep being an ace? Well, his home run rate is what’s driving that right now, and it’s currently at a superhuman level for a starter–the same rate, 0.38 per nine, that he had from the pen last year.

Only one starter has approached that in the last three years–Tim Hudson allowed just eight homers in 188 innings in 2004. The top twenty of this list is filled with groundball specialists (Jake Westbrook, Brandon Webb, Derek Lowe); pitchers with great stuff (Roger Clemens; AJ Burnett; Carlos Zambrano); and lefties with odd deliveries and a lot of deliberate pitches outside the zone (Dontrelle Willis; Tom Glavine; Doug Davis.) It’s weird, but I’d say Looper–used as a ROOGY in the pen–fits best with the left-handed crowd. Hopefully he avoids the company of the Carl Pavano-Victor Zambrano set.