Buying Time For Cliff Lee
Cliff Lee displays his masterfully groomed coiffure on Thursday, August 26th.If you were listening intently -- or even only half-listening -- to the KRLD-FM radio broadcast after Delmon Young jacked a poorly located Cliff Lee change-up early in last night's game, you probably detected the slightest twinge of annoyance in Eric Nadel's voice as he explained Lee's recent usage pattern. When Lee hasn't been dominant, it has seemed as though there's always been some sort of extenuating circumstance making his performance appear to be worse than it actually was (e.g. porous defense, bullpen problems), and now with no such reasons available to exonerate Lee from last night's effort, there's a building crusade of sorts against his every-fourth-day pitching schedule.
Most of Lee's recent problems appear to stem from flagging command, a symptom often ascribable to pitcher fatigue; however, Lee insists he is neither fatigued nor in need of an additional day of rest, so that should be the end of the story, right? Not necessarily. I'm absolutely not going to accuse Lee of outright prevarication, but there's a key distinction to be made between Lee refuting talk of him being a lock to sign with the Yankees -- talk which doesn't even matter, because he's almost certainly going to the highest bidder no matter what -- and Lee attempting to preserve the image of being an ultra-durable ace who can shoulder any innings-based workload so long as he receives his standard four days of rest between starts. He has a deeply vested interest in maintaining such an image.
What none of this answers is the question of whether working in a few extra days of rest for Lee now will pay dividends later. Intuitively, you would assume the answer to be 'yes,' and anecdotally, this proved the case last year when the Phillies granted him one extra day of rest after a bad three-start run near the beginning of September, but a couple of problems surface here: (a) Lee actually received five days of rest before the second of those three consecutive poor starts, a game in which he allowed six earned runs in just three innings, and (b) if the extra day of rest truly did produce some performance-boosting effects, they were short-lived, because he got hammered in his final two regular-season starts of 2009. Not an especially strong anecdotal example.
What about on a more holistic level? For his career, Lee is materially better when pitching on five days' rest (1,822 PA, 3.64 FIP, 3.55 K/BB) than on four days' rest (3,197 PA, 3.80 FIP, 2.88 K/BB), a deviation large enough that I'm a bit inclined to believe it's not just a fluke ... but at the recent SABR 40 convention, Baseball Reference founder Sean Forman and baseball economist J.C. Bradbury found that the impact of days of rest on a starting pitcher's performance is negligible to the point of not being statistically significant. In other words, the population as a whole performed essentially the same regardless of the number of days of rest. I'm still more inclined to believe that Lee's a little better on extra rest than the study's findings might have you believe, but I don't think it's definitive either way.
With the Rangers still miles ahead of the second-best team in the division and home-field advantage not being an utterly dire need, I guess there's no real harm to be inflicted by throwing a few extra days of rest here and there at Lee. If he's not fatigued, you lose only a start or two at most in the process (and probably don't lose any real ground in the division race), and if he's more fatigued than he's letting on, well, then maybe it pays off later ... but that's a very strong "maybe." It will make for a very neat and tidy narrative if Lee receives extra rest and pitches well immediately thereafter, but if that happens, the rest likely won't have been as instrumental as you'll have been led to believe.
Analysis, Game Recaps, The Season
Reader Comments (27)
The Rangers are in a position to play it safe. In my opinion, playing it safe would be giving Lee some more rest. Nothing bad could come of it.
Quite frankly I am glad that everyone gets to see the human side of Lee before we offer the franchise, DFW metroplex, first born male sons and whatever else we can lay our hands on ina vain attempt to outbid the (damn) Yankeess for him.
Nadel is not prone to hyperbole or overreaction so I trust his judgment of "what he sees". That said, this was mostly just a few pitches, some that clearly missed their intended spots, and some that were placed immaculately in the spot where Molina's mitt was but inexplicably not called by Derryl Cousins. Pretty pathetic, that last one, but oh well, it happens, you know, what with Cliff Lee having a reputation of being all over the place with his control and all. Oy
Still, a little extra rest couldn't hurt.
The best thing about all of this is that it gets everyone off the notion that Cliff Lee is superman. He's a really good pitcher, but he's not Sandy Koufax. And I really think, by the way, that he hates The Ballpark.
I'm with Mark. It's a long season. A little extra rest on the back half can't hurt. The way he is pitching now, Lee won't be getting CC Sabathia money. It would be in the best interest of everyone to re-charge the batteries an extra day here and there.
Let's take 2 of 3 from Oakland.
I think Lee came with a superman reputation and Ron Washington decided to use his endurance to save an overworked Bull Pen. the last 50 games have to be managed differently than the first 100 games in a season. Arms get tired and fatigued if there is any difference. There were times when it was obvious to a casual observer that Lee was not having his best day. Wash rode the dude into the dirt when he should have pulled him to save Lee for another day. Every Coach and manager has done it. It isn't a crime or injustice but a "hook in time saves nine." It's that last 50 game push that takes a sharp eye and a steady bull pen.
Can we please stop making excuses for Lee every time he has a bad outing? He's too good a pitcher to need that. The guy didn't pitch the whole first month of the season, and he went 6, 7 and 5 innnings in his three starts before last night. His pitch counts have (to his credit) been very low. When he says he's not tired, he means it. He's not tired; he's just human.
Speaking of human, WOW - Strasburg needs TJ surgery. WOW.
I don't think I bother with it unless the schedule presents a real good opportunity. Maybe after the team clinches and rosters expand you call up Omar Beltre or something. But right now, the small gains likely are not more than the potential loss of throwing guys like Lewis, Wilson, etc. sooner. I think odds are very great that Lee will be fine down the road, and you can rest him a bit after that magic number has been reached.
REST! REST! REST! It has got to be the main problem after 2/3 of the season and the travel as well as oitching on 4 days rest all season. it is a cumulative thing and lee is like every one else, doesn't think that he needs any rest. wrong!
From the outside (all of us), I'm sure certain things seem plausible. But, on the inside, I'm willing to offer only short odds that a discussion has already happened with Lee to the effect of..."hey, Cliff, what do you need?". And I have no reason to think that Cliff will not be honest in that dialogue.
And I have no reason to think that those who make the decisions will get Cliff whatever he says he needs.
Chill.
Hank is probably right. I'll bet they've asked Lee if he needs the extra day, and I'll bet he's been honest. He has no motivation (financial or otherwise) to mislead his team.
i think he's already on the Yankees payroll and he's tanking it. apparently so does the ESPN analyst who says he's got an anonymous source
Lee didn't pitch the first month of the season but he has more innings pitched than any of the other pitchers, so he has crammed more innings into a shorter span. He needs rest! How many pitcher are going to tell you they need rest? I think Harrison into the rotation for a start or 2 to give all our pitchers an extra day would be ideal. It isn't like the A's or Angels are running us down in the standings and Harrison has been pitching well lately.
BTW love the O'Day chant that I've heard at the Ballpark recently. Very cool.
I'm tired of hearing the Lee apologized. This guy hasn't pitched near as advertised for the Rangers. And the four days rest is nonsense as well since the other pitchers are all on four days rest as well and not having the same problem. Was he really getting that much more rest in Seattle? He was 8-3 on a very bad team, and suddenly he becomes 2-5 on a very good team. Something doesn't add up and I'm tired of hearing the excuses.
Am I the only one who thinks that a pitcher who ranks 9th in IP and 62nd in pitches thrown has a significantly lower amount of stress on his arm/body than say a John Lackey who ranks 8th in pitches thrown and 21st in IP? Lee throws fewer than 14 pitches per inning. Even though he's thrown a lot of innings (averaging over 7 2/3 per start), he's been very efficient and should be fine the rest of the way. He's had a bad run, but I'm fairly confident he'll straighten up and start rolling sometime soon.
Am I the only one who thinks that a pitcher who ranks 9th in IP and 62nd in pitches thrown has a significantly lower amount of stress on his arm/body than say a John Lackey who ranks 8th in pitches thrown and 21st in IP?
Exactly. 150 innings for Pitcher A who throws 2,400 pitches is not the same as 150 innings for Pitcher B who throws 2,850 pitches. Plus, there's probably (certainly?) a decent correlation between pitches per inning and average leverage index, and higher-leverage situations are more stressful on pitchers, as they have a tendency to ramp up their velocity near the max in such situations.
Thank you, Dave H and Joey. Great point. The guy says he isn't tired, and there is no reason to believe he should be tired. We all need to stop making excuses for a guy who is not trying to make excuses for himself.
Evan says:
Here's one reason why LHP Cliff Lee might be in need of an extra day of rest soon: He's on the heaviest innings-per-start pace by an AL pitcher in the last 20 years. Even after going 5.2 and 5 innings in his last two outings, Lee is averaging more than seven and two-thirds innings per start. He's actually at 7.81 per outing through his first 23 games.
Rangers manager Ron Washington said Friday that Lee would not get an extra day before his next start schedule for Tuesday at Kansas City. If the Rangers choose to give Lee, who has started every fifth day since the All-Star break, an extra day, it would come after Thursday's off-day between Kansas City and Minnesota.
The problem is that Evan's looking at the wrong thing. A heavy innings-per-start count is meaningless in and of itself. He could be logging an average of just 13 pitches per inning and still come out right around 100 pitches per start (and nobody would dare bat an eyelash). As it stands, he's averaging 13.75 pitches per inning, or 107.5 pitches per start, which is only the 60th-highest mark out of 895 qualifying starting pitchers dating back to 2000. And of the top 200 pitchers on that highest pitches-per-start list, no pitcher has a lower pitches-per-inning rate than Lee.
The more I think about, the more I think this "Lee needs more rest!" thing is getting overplayed.
Seems like about once a week we have some new thing to panic about, and it's always way overblown. Lee is fine.
Joey, any chance we'll see more of the "Minor Mysteries" series soon? That was a great article on Matt Thompson by David and Jason, but it's been a month since that entry and I'd love to read more of those.
The numbers say he's fine. Joey says it's overblown. Joey's probably right. Lee says he's fine. I believe him. I still say an extra day of rest here and there isn't going to hurt. I think Michael Young could use a day off too even though I'm sure he says he's fine. Sometimes when you're working seven days a week, the body needs a break even if the heart is ready to go.
Pitches since 4/30 when Lee made his first start
2472 Lee
2351 Wilson
2252 Lewis
You can hide your head in the sand and pretend everything is OK, but 1 quality start out of the last 6 tells me all I need to know. Lee needs some rest! Or maybe we could just run him out there until he has nothing left in Oct, that's a real good plan.
1 quality start out of the last 6 tells me all I need to know
Hilarious.
So the Yankees/Tampa games where he was a combined 21 Ks to 1 BB but got atrocious defense (first from Cruz, then from Arias/Boggs/Cantu) were not "quality starts"?
Funny stuff.
Lee has a 3.30 xFIP with the Rangers. He had a 3.29 xFIP with the Mariners.
Just terrible luck with BABIP, defense, and HR/FB lately. That will all regress.
He's just fine, and a lost start or two would be a waste in a tight race for home field advantage with the Twins.
I'm tired of hearing the Lee apologized. This guy hasn't pitched near as advertised for the Rangers. And the four days rest is nonsense as well since the other pitchers are all on four days rest as well and not having the same problem. Was he really getting that much more rest in Seattle? He was 8-3 on a very bad team, and suddenly he becomes 2-5 on a very good team. Something doesn't add up and I'm tired of hearing the excuses.
W/L is a team stat.
Lee is a 3.30 xFIP with the Rangers. He was a 3.29 with the Mariners. He's been the exact same pitcher. If you're looking for what "doesn't add up" look to luck and defense.
So the Yankees/Tampa games where he was a combined 21 Ks to 1 BB but got atrocious defense (first from Cruz, then from Arias/Boggs/Cantu) were not "quality starts"?
Funny stuff.
Yes let's make excuses for him. I'll give you the TB game that was a complete meltdown in all aspects. We'll take any blame and put it elsewhere. NY sure I only saw the last part so I'll give you that one too (even though I see no errors in the box score and he only pitched 6.1 innings). And we can lay blame for the numbers in a few starts at Washington's feet for not pulling him when he should have. Hope that doesn't get me labeled a racists.
Just terrible luck with BABIP, defense, and HR/FB lately. That will all regress.
Love it when stat guys use luck as a reason that certain stats aren't showing the results they expect. Just makes me giggle.
Lee is a 3.30 xFIP with the Rangers.
Ah my favorite "stat". The one that says...
Bud Norris
Randy Wells
Joe Blanton
Craig Stammen
and Brandon Marrow (Didn't know he was a two sport man! Hockey and baseball what a guy!)
are better pitchers than CJ. Are you kidding me? Want to trade straight up CJ for one of these guys?
What problem do you have with giving him extra rest?
Yeah I know it's Brenden.
Pitches since 4/30 when Lee made his first start
2472 Lee
2351 Wilson
2252 Lewis
That's fine and all, but I don't know that a couple of extra starts for Lee in four months' time is so extreme that it isn't offset by the pre-4/30 starts for Wilson/Lewis. And I would think that Lee's lower average leverage index (0.96) over that time against those of Wilson (1.01) and Lewis (1.11) would also be worth a little something.
And we can lay blame for the numbers in a few starts at Washington's feet for not pulling him when he should have. Hope that doesn't get me labeled a racists.
I concur that the Rangers got very little utility out of Lee in his 8/21 start at BAL in the extra 40 pitches he threw after the fourth inning (during which he amassed only five outs). In hindsight, the Rangers should have yanked him, but given Maddux's significant role in deciding on pitching moves I wouldn't be so quick to heap all the blame upon Washington.
If the Rangers decide to give Lee an extra day of rest, fine. They're certainly in a better position to make such a call than I am. As some others have said, however, I wouldn't want it to happen if it entailed disrupting the schedule of another playoff rotation lock (Lewis/Wilson) or otherwise put the Rangers at some sort of distinct disadvantage in their push for home-field advantage. And I'm not convinced that one extra day of rest acts as some sort of magic performance-boosting potion, which some -- not necessarily the posters here -- seem to believe it will.