Clifton Phifer Lee

ESPN's Rob Neyer, one of my favorite baseball writers of all (and yes, I'm the sort of person who has a handful of favorite baseball writers), wrote a column the other day opining that ... well, I'll let HIM say it, after I set it up for him. Since it requires an ESPN Insider membership to read the whole thing, I'll give you the gist of it.

Neyer's column is titled "What's weird in April?" beginning with the fact that the Braves are in fourth place despite having the best run differential in their division. That's mostly explained by their 0-9 record in one-run games, which indicates bad luck more than anything. But I don't really care about the Braves or the National League East.

Then he moves on to what he calls "individually, the weirdest story of April," our Cliff Lee. Neyer points links to a column by Rany Jazayerli of Baseball Prospectus (posted April 26, so it's a week old, but still), which contains the following passage:

In 31.2 innings, he has allowed 11 hits, walked 2, struck out 29, and has a 0.28 ERA. I’d venture to say that half the pitchers in the majors today would struggle to put up those numbers if they got four starts in the Midwest League.

Just focus on his last three starts. On three consecutive occasions Lee has pitched 8 innings or more, allowed no more than 3 hits, walked no more than one batter, and struck out at least 8 batters.

We have game logs going back to 1956, courtesy of Retrosheet and Baseball-Reference.com. Since 1956, do you know how many pitchers had made three straight starts with 8+ innings, <=3 hits, <=1 walk, and 8+ strikeouts? Here's the list, which I have put in alphabetical order for your convenience:

Cliff Lee.

Here's that list again, sorted by last name:

Lee, Cliff.

That's it. Lee's stretch of pitching is unmatched in at least 50 years, and quite possibly ever, when you consider that strikeouts tend to decrease in frequency as you go back in time.

Yes, it's impressive. Since then, in his last start, Wednesday night, Lee gave up three runs, all on the last pitch he threw in the game, and his ERA ballooned to 0.96. Before that swing, he was at 0.24. Lee's obviously not quite this good -- no pitcher is -- but it's fantastic to see him get off to this kind of start, especially when you consider how bad he was last year.

Anyway, Neyer believes (and rightly so, I'd say) that Lee is fundamentally a much better pitcher than he showed last year, and a much lesser pitcher than he's shown thus far in '08. Were the Cy Young given out in early May, he'd have it locked up -- but, of course, there are five months left to go in the season, and Lee will struggle from time to time. Every pitcher does. Baseball simply isn't this easy.

Neyer also notes, quoting another blogger, that Lee's batting average on balls in play (kind of an egghead statistic, but it does serve as a fairly reliable predictor of future success) is .153. He's not going to be able to keep that up, because no defense is that good.

Neyer's conclusion, which is what I was setting up in my first paragraph:

So is Cliff Lee for real? I think all we can say is that he's really healthy. He's going to give up a higher batting average on balls in play, and some reasonable percentage of the fly balls he gives up will fly over the fence. So no, he probably doesn't wind up winning the Cy Young Award. But I'll bet he's better than average. And considering how well C.C. Sabathia's pitched in his last two starts, suddenly the Indians would seem to have the best rotation in the majors.

Sabathia struggled a bit last night against the Royals, and took the loss, but still, he appears to have largely turned it around. And while the Indians are off to a bit of a disappointing start as a team, at 14-16, they're still only a game and a half out of first place. I feel pretty optimistic.