At this point everyone knows the story of Cliff Lee, in 2007 he had injury problems, pitched terribly and was eventually sent down to AAA. In 2008, we saw a new Lee, one we had never seen before--at least not to this magnitude. Lee ended up taking home the AL Cy Young award after a brilliant season. So what happened during the off-season that transformed Cliff Lee into the top pitcher in the AL?
To answer that question we need to look at Lee's stats from previous years. Most people forget that he was a Cy Young candidate in 2005.
2004: 14-8 5.43 ERA 1.50 WHIP 8.1 K/9 2.0 K/BB 33.4 GB%
2005: 18-5 3.79 ERA 1.22 WHIP 6.4 K/9 2.8 K/BB 35.6 GB%
2006: 14-11 4.40 ERA 1.41 WHIP 5.8 K/9 2.2 K/BB 32.7 GB%
2007: 5-8 6.29 ERA 1.52 WHIP 6.1 K/9 1.8 K/BB 35.3 GB%
2008: 23-3 2.54 ERA 1.11 WHIP 6.9 K/9 5.0 K/BB 45.9 GB%
The first number that jumps out is Lee's sparkling 5.0 K/BB rate which is a dramatic improvement from his previous seasons. Since his K/9 rate stayed roughly the same as it had throughout his career, the increased K/BB rate means that Lee is giving up significantly fewer free passes.
Lee also managed to generate about 10% more groundballs than last year. Pitchers with groundball rates (GB%) of around 45-50% or higher usually fare better than pitchers who are significantly under 40% as groundballs are more likely to be turned into outs than flyballs or line drives. Up until 2008, Lee had always been an extreme fly ball pitcher, the 10% increase shows that his pitches have more vertical movement on them--another trait associated with success.
If Cliff Lee can keep up his fantastic K/BB and groundball rates, he should continue to find success, though maybe not to the extent that he did last year. Lee will be 31 years old this coming season, and while he seems to have already adapted to the physical decline, history is not kind to pitchers over 30 years old. If he can keep his peripheral stats up, about 15 wins with an ERA around 3.50 and a sub-1.30 WHIP is not out of the question. Lee will not repeat his dynamic 2008 season next year, but he still has the ability to be a top-20 starting pitcher in the future.
Sources
FanGraphs.com
Baseball-Reference.com
Good article.
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