Three weeks into the season, it's still too early to read to much into players' performances so far. We can, however, look a little deeper into players' numbers and see if they might continue to perform higher/lower than expectations, or if they've just been lucky.
Strangely, the greatest contrast between these two categories comes when we look at the two starters who have yielded the lowest BABiP so far this year- Gavin Floyd and Cliff Lee. Floyd, who had a 5.27 ERA in 70 innings last year, is 2-0 with a 1.40 ERA in three starts thus far. Lee was demoted to AAA Buffalo last year with a 6.38 ERA through 16 starts, but has a ridiculous 0.40 ERA in 2008. Obviously the predictive value of ERA after three starts is extremely minimal, so let's take a look at their peripherals (from FanGraphs):
Floyd has been impressively lucky. His K/9 and BB/9 are both actually worse than last year, but the absurd BABiP and LOB% numbers more than cancel that out. Not surprisingly, we should not expect Gavin Floyd to maintain a sub-2.00 (or even sub-4.50) ERA throughout the year.
Lee is a more complicated, and more interesting, case. Allowing one earned run in 22.2 innings is very difficult to do- you have to be both extremely lucky, and very good. Lee fits both these categories, with a .154 BABiP and 10.0 K/BB ratio.
His FIP of 1.70 is overly optimistic, but it makes you wonder- how good can he be? The biggest surprise has been issuing so few walks, as his career BB/9 is 3.03. But there is some precedent for Lee having decent control, as in 2005, when he had a 3.79 ERA in 202 IP, his BB/9 was only 2.32.
The strikeouts are interesting as well. His current K/9 is 1.24 higher than his career mark of 6.70, but he's been all over the place. He actually peaked at 8.09 in 2004. Last year with the Indians he was down to 6.10, but thrived after he was sent down, with 50 Ks in 41 innings at Buffalo.
Prior to this season, you could have looked at Cliff Lee's career stat line and thought, "If this guy every puts it all together, he could be fantastic." His first three starts have forced us to seriously consider this option. It's possible, if somewhat unlikely, that Lee has "put it all together", and could throw up a line somewhere in the range of 200 IP, 175 K, 55BB, with an ERA around 3.50, which would make him one of the best pitchers in the league. He could also revert back to his 2007 form, but I think the mere possibility that Cliff Lee could be a Cy Young contender is one of the most interesting developments of the young season.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Early Season Surprises: Lucky, or Good?
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3 comments:
I was actually also looking at Cliff Lee's stats today also. One thing that stood out to me was that his line drive rate is way down and his ground ball rate is way up. I would say that is also promising. His low babip isn't complete luck.
The other thing I think is interesting about Lee, at least from a pessimistic standpoint, is that he's still allowing 45% fly balls, but not a single one of them as turned into a home run yet. Optimistically, his BABIP is a lot lower against lefties than righties it looks like, although admittedly, I haven't gone to look at the AB totals because I'm trying not to get kicked out of class.
While Lee has certainly been excellent and could very well still turn out to be a stop starter, it probably helps that in his three starts he has faced Minnesota 1x and Oakland 2x. Oakland's been 7th in RS in the AL so far this year but they aren't a juggernaut, and Minnesota's offense is a joke.
It could also be that Lee matches up well against them, accounting for 2/3s of his starts.
Would really help if he kept this up until C.C. snaps out of it.
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