Cliff Jumping
The Cleveland Indians entered the season with a a rotation that they felt could be the strength of their ball club. With a dominating lefty and emerging sinkerball right hander, they felt they had found the elusive 1-2 punch that so many teams were looking for. The back of the rotation was less stable as no one really knew what to expect from the guys who didn’t have the same power stuff as the frontline guys.
Well, through the first several weeks, the Indians find themselves being carried by a dominating lefty and an emerging sinkerball right hander, trying to pick up the slack for the rest of the rotation. Interestingly, however, the script has flipped – Cliff Lee and Jake Westbrook are ones that are pitching like Cy Young candidates while C.C. Sabathia and Fausto Carmona struggle to find their groove.
Lee, in particular, is having a pretty remarkable beginning to the season. A southpaw with a fastball that sits around 89 and a decent curveball, he’s always been able to get an average amount of swings and misses, but has struggled with inconsistent command. As a flyball pitcher, he’s been prone to giving up the longball as well, and the combination of allowing walks and home runs isn’t really one that leads to consistent success.
So, after a disastrous 2007 season where he lost his rotation spot and found himself in Triple-A, Lee has apparently decided to just stop walking people.
Through 23 innings of work, he’s issued just two free passes. In looking at his Baseball Reference pitch summary data, his strike percentages are essentially unchanged from last year, however. From the raw data, it’s hard to see that Lee is doing anything differently, even though the results are vastly superior. If this early season performance represented a sustainable leap forward, we’d be able to see it in the types of pitches he was throwing. Right now, it looks like Lee’s pretty much throwing like he’s always thrown, but just getting better results from it.
While the Indians have to be happy with how he’s performed, they’d also be wise to not count on the belief that Lee has taken a real step forward, and instead expect his results to begin to more closely match up with his skillset.
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Very nice. If Cliff Lee throws a curveball that doesn’t break can we call them Cliffhangers?
I does appear that he is throwing more first pitch strikes, though. I calculated it at about 6% more often than 2007, and he’s getting 8% fewer strikes with contact. This tells me he’s getting ahead and throwing a) more quality pitches or b) better location.
According to the data at Baseball Reference, he’s actually throwing less first pitch strikes. He’s at 56% First Strike Percentage, down from his career average of 62%. How did you calculate your data?
I’m sure he’s had better location than usual during his first several starts. I’m just not sure that this is a sustainable skill. If the difference in his results is simply a millimeter here or there within the strike zone, that’s the definition of having his success hanging from a thread.
I also see a 56% first strike rate (that includes first pitch outs), from an non-BR data source.
The Indians have a deep enough rotation that sometimes the tail-enders can come to the rescue. In last year’s American League Championship Series, it was the tail-enders, Westbrook and Byrd among the starters, that gave them their shot at the pennant, before the ultimate 4-3 loss to the Boston Red Sox.
As for Lee, he’s getting off to a vastly better start in 2008 than in 2007. I calculate a sabermetric ERA for him of 3.00+(13*0+3*3-2*20)/22.67, or 1.50 (based on 0 HRs, 2BBs, and 20Ks in 22 2/3 IP) so far in 2008, versus 5.02 (based on 17 HRs, 36 BBs, and 66 Ks in 97 1/3 IP) for all of 2007.
These hypotheticals compare to his actual ERAs of 6.29 last year and 0.40 so far this year.
Without regard to the (relatively) minor variations in strike outs, “forgetting” to walk people (or issue home runs) are huge factors in the above, or most other, predictors of ERA.