Don't Worry. Cliff Lee Is Still a Dominant Pitcher.
After his May 31 start where he gave up six runs, two homers, and three walks in just over five innings, the over-reactors are in full force. Fortunately his name is not Cole Hamels, or people would be looking to cut him already.
As always when someone is doing worse or better, than normal, people will look to find a reason. In my opinion, when you start hearing a multitude of reasons, the chances are much greater that they really have no clue.
Lee's current 3.98 ERA is no way indicative of his ability. In fact, I believe you can make a better argument that this year could be his best yet. With an xFIP of 2.63 and SIERA of 2.81, good for fourth and third in baseball, respectively, suggests he's having a great year. They also beat last year's career-best marks of 3.06 and 3.03.
The main cause for such a jump is his strikeout rate. Increasing over two batters per nine innings will tend to do that. His increased strikeout rate does not appear to be a fluke, either.
His swinging-strike percentage (9.8 percent) and contact percentage (79.5 percent) would be career bests over a full season.
As far as the primary luck stats go, his BABIP is over 40 points higher than his career norm and his home runs to fly ball ratio is a shade higher than normal.
However, I wanted to make it a priority delving into topics I hear people announce as being his problem, such as his control and release points.
His Control Isn't as Good
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Unfortunately, the picture is a bit smaller than I would like, but you can still make most of it out. Simply enough, the red dots are called strikes and the green dots are balls.
By my count, there are 12 to 13 called strikes that looked to be balls, and another 10 right on the edge.
On the flipside, there are 68 by my count that were called balls inside the strike-zone, with about another 20 on the edge.
That's a pretty significant difference, certainly enough to increase his walk-rate from 1.67 BB/9 to 2.14 BB/9.
His Release Points Are Off (Part 1)
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It seems whenever Cliff Lee's "struggles" are brought up on sports radio, you hear that his release points are off. This should be pretty easy to find out.
You'd think with that sort of game on May 31, they'd look completely out of whack. Here are the release points from this particular game.
His Release Points Are Off (Part 2)
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Here are his release points for all of 2011.
Please note the colors do not match up with each pitch type from pitcher to pitcher, so please refer to the key code to find which pitch type goes with each corresponding color.
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His Release Points Are Off (Part 3)
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For another reference, here is a game from last year. Again, aside from more pitches being thrown, they are generally pretty consistent with his May 31, 2011 game.
As for this particular game in the photo, it came Oct. 18, 2010, against the Yankees where he pitched eight innings of two- hit ball along with 13 strikeouts and just one walk.
Most of these people just look for any reason to explain a string of poor or hot starts rather than accept the most likely reason: that a baseball season has strings of peaks and valleys.
Soon enough, Cliff Lee will be dominating once again and naturally these same people will hypothesize and produce the "cure" that turned it back around.
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