Cliff Lee Wins 20th Game of the Year: So What?

2) I'm probably shooting my argument in the foot here since three of those four guys won the Cy Young Award. The one that didn't, Schilling, only missed out on it because of one of those incredible September campaigns. His teammate, Randy Johnson, who entered September 2002 with a 19-5 record, went 5-0 with a 0.66 ERA that month.

3) While they all saw some kind of drop in performance, it's not like they all went completely in the tank, either. I am NOT saying that Cliff Lee sucks, and that we just need another month for me to prove the point.


However, it should be noted that the Royals, on a scale of one to 10, do suck. So that should be at least one win in those two starts, maybe two. On the other hand, the Twins, Red Sox, and White Sox (their recent shutout notwithstanding) are all good teams, and Lee's Indians are, well...not. At least, they're not a good team when Lee's not pitching.

The Tribe has averaged 4.85 runs per game in 2008, just eighth in the 16-team American League, but when Lee pitches, that number jumps to 5.97 runs, the ninth best number in the AL.

That means that when anyone else pitches, they get just 4.6 runs of support per game, on average. Which would explain why nobody else on the team has a winning record, except Fausto Carmona, who's just 7-5.

If the Tribe just averaged their usual 4.85 runs per game when Lee pitched, his record would be more like 18-4, which is still pretty darn good, but nobody would be using wacky phrases like, "best statistical seasons in baseball history."

Baseball Prospectus suggests that his "Expected" W-L record should be something more like 16-5, even less "historic."

So how has this happened? Well, besides the run support, Cliff has gotten a lot of help from his fielders. The Indians rank just 20th in MLB in Defensive Efficiency (the rate at which they turn playable balls into outs), but when Lee has pitched, they've allowed only three unearned runs. Nobody else in MLB with at least 170 innings under his belt (there are 34 of these) has fewer than three unearned runs.

Or, put another way, Brandon Webb has almost the same number of innings pitched as Lee and only one less Win, but he's allowed 11 unearned runs, which have undoubtedly contributed to his six losses. Additionally, his bullpen has been exceptionally good, allowing slightly fewer of his leftover runners to score than you would normally expect.

So congrats to Cliff, and I wish him the best, but before we start calling his season "historic," let's at least wait until the season's actually history, OK?

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