2011 MLB Playoffs: Examining Cliff Lee in NLDS Game 2

Last night is the perfect one game example of how fluky baseball can be, and often times, the best team doesn't always win.

To the casual fan, Cliff Lee's 12 hits, five earned runs and two walks looks like a poor game. To the more enlightened, it's an otherwise good game that was hamstrung by bad luck and quite similar to his first two months of the season. 

As a Phillies fan, it was even more frustrating watching baseballs trickle past Phillies' infielders while consistently landing in the gloves of Cardinals' fielders at polar opposite rates. 

No Help from Jerry Meals

The picture above is the PitchFX data of called strikes and balls. If you were watching the game, you know there was a bit of controversy and complaining from Tony La Russa over the strike-zone. It appears all of his complaining paid off in the end. 

Lee had two pitches right on the border called strikes while having three pitches right on the border called balls. In addition, while he didn't have any pitches outside the strike-zone called strikes, he had seven apparent strikes called balls. 

Pitch by Pitch

Like usual, Cliff Lee used a variety of pitches. He threw his two-seam fastball most often(48 times). Batters swung at the pitch 20 times and missed a respectable four times.

Lee's changeup proved to be his best pitch for producing missed swings. Of the 21 times he threw it, six swung and missed. 

His most problematic pitch was his cutter. Despite throwing it 18 times, he did not get a single swinging-strike. In addition he gave up most of his line drives of the night on this pitch. 

Batted Ball Data

This is where luck plays its biggest role. One start grounders find their ways through holes, another time they find their way into a glove. It can be the difference between a no-hitter and a 12-hit performance like we saw last night. In total, Cliff Lee's BABIP against was .600. That is insanely high by any measure. I'd venture to say a high-school pitcher could have a lower BABIP than that (of course, he'd be giving up tons of homers, but that's beside the point). 

Using Baseball-Reference's play-by-play log, Lee's batted ball data consisted of nine grounders, five line- drives, three pop-ups and three fly-balls. Lee didn't have luck on his side on any of those types. 

For grounders, five of them managed to get through (55.6 percent). Typically, just under 24 percent will find a hole. That's a difference of three hits right there.

Five line drives is a pretty good amount, but four of them landed for a hit (80 percent) when the average is just over 71 percent. Although if one more of those line drives were an out, that would have been just 60 percent for the night, under the league average. 

Of the three flies, two managed to become a hit, both of which were unfortunately triples. Two-thirds of flies landing for hits is much greater than the 14 percent of the time they usually do. 

Lastly, pop-ups should be automatic outs, and almost all of the time, they are. However, one of the three managed to drop. Not much Lee can do about that. 

DIPS Loves Some Cliff Lee

Taking away the flukiness that can happen when balls are in play, Lee actually performed well. In the aspects that the pitcher has most control over, strikeouts, walks and homers, Lee was his typical self, posting a 1.03 FIP and 2.28 xFIP. 

If Lee gets another start, don't expect bleeding singles to keep happening. Unless the Cardinals have Merlin the Wizard in their dugout, chances are we'll see some balancing out soon.