Daily Notes: A More Better Cliff Lee?
Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.
1. Featured Game: Boston at Philadelphia, 13:35 ET
2. Largely Superfluous Video: Cliff Lee’s May 15th Start
3. Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
4. Today’s Complete Schedule
Featured Game: Boston at Philadelphia, 13:35 ET
Cliff Lee Status Update
Here’s a status update for 33-year-old left-hander Cliff Lee, who starts this afternoon for Philadelphia: 37.0 IP, 26.2% K, 3.1% BB, 61.1% GB, 2.09 SIERA, 61 xFIP-, 1.1 WAR.
Regarding Lee’s Strikeout Rate, Where It’d Rank in Terms of His Career
Regarding Lee’s present strikeout rate, it would represent the best mark of his career were the season to end today. (He posted a 25.9% strikeout rate last season.)
Regarding Lee’s Walk Rate, Where It’d Rank in Terms of His Career
Regarding Lee’s walk rate, it’d be the second-best mark of his career. (He posted a 2.1% walk rate with Seattle and Texas in 2010.)
Regarding Lee’s Ground-Ball Rate, Where It’d Rank in Terms of His Career
Regarding Lee’s current ground-ball rate, it’d represent a decisive career-best mark. (In fact, Lee has never posted a ground-ball rate above the 46.3% he recorded last season.)
A Not-Shocking Other Thing About Cliff Lee
It will come as decidedly not a shock to the bespectacled and virile reader to learn — in light of the above, I mean — to learn that Cliff Lee currently owns what would be both the lowest SIERA and xFIP- of his career.
Facing Lee
Facing Lee is Boston’s Josh Beckett (41.2 IP, 98 xFIP-, 0.2 WAR). Everyone knows who he is.
Readers’ Preferred Broadcast
FanGraphs readers prefer Philadelphia Radio (link).
Largely Superfluous Video: Cliff Lee’s May 15th Start
Here, for no particular reason, is footage from Cliff Lee’s most recent start, May 15th against Houston (box). Notable pitches: all of them, mostly, although the slow curve at 1:32 will please fans of all ages and difficulty levels.
Other Notable Games
Atlanta at Tampa Bay | 13:40 ET
An observation regarding Tampa Bay’s Ben Zobrist: despite a .226 BABIP, he’s managed to post a 123 wRC+ and 1.4 WAR this season through 173 plate appearances. Other observation regarding Zobrist: his lowest WAR since 2009 (inclusive) is 3.9 in 2010, the fourth-best mark over that stretch.
Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Atlanta Radio.
Oakland at San Francisco | 16:05 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
German filmmaker Wim Wenders directed a film called The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick. This is sort of like that, except the penalty kick is watching Tim Lincecum pitch and the goalie is every Giants fan.
Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio.
Today’s Complete Schedule
Here’s the complete schedule for all of today’s games, with our very proprietary watchability (NERD) scores for each one. Pitching probables and game times aggregated from MLB.com and RotoWire. The average NERD Game Score for today is 5.1.
Regard, a magnificent and sortable table:
| Away | SP | Tm. | Gm. | Tm. | SP | Home | Time | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Johnny Cueto | CIN | 5 | 3 | 6 | 6 | 9 | NYA | CC Sabathia | 13:05 |
| Josh Johnson | MIA | 8 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 1 | CLE | Derek Lowe | 13:05 |
| Kevin Correia | PIT | 1 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 8 | DET | Max Scherzer | 13:05 |
| Dillon Gee | NYN | 9 | 1 | 6 | 7 | 4 | TOR | He. Alvarez | 13:07 |
| Wei-Yin Chen | BAL | 3 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 10 | WAS | St. Strasburg | 13:35 |
| Josh Beckett | BOS | 5 | 6 | 7 | 4 | 10 | PHI | Cliff Lee | 13:35 |
| Tim Hudson | ATL | 6 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 8 | TB | David Price | 13:40 |
| Colby Lewis | TEX | 5 | 10 | 6 | 6 | 6 | HOU | Jordan Lyles* | 14:05 |
| Wade Miley | AZ | 5 | 4 | 4 | 6 | 2 | KC | Na. Adcock* | 14:10 |
| Jason Marquis | MIN | 0 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 10 | MIL | Zack Greinke | 14:10 |
| Jake Peavy | CHA | 5 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 2 | CHN | Paul Maholm | 14:20 |
| Blake Beavan | SEA | 2 | 4 | 2 | 7 | 0 | COL | Jeremy Guthrie | 15:10 |
| Ervin Santana | LAA | 5 | 3 | 6 | 5 | 8 | SD | Anthony Bass | 16:05 |
| Bartolo Colon | OAK | 4 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 7 | SF | Tim Lincecum | 16:05 |
| Kyle Lohse | STL | 4 | 10 | 5 | 6 | 4 | LAN | Ch. Billingsley | 20:00 |
To learn more about Pitcher and Team NERD scores click here.
To learn how Game NERD Scores are calculated, click here.
* = Fewer than 20 IP, NERD at discretion of very handsome author.
Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.
Interesting info on Lee. However a) it’s five starts, and I would be surprised if he doesn’t have a few other comparable five-start stretches in his career, and b) those five starts came against the not-so-vaunted Giants, Pirates, Astros and Mets (x2).
Halladay: 20.2 K%, 5.3 BB%, 47.9 GB%.
Dillon Gee: 19.5 K%, 4.7 BB%, 54.1 GB%
“A more better”
LOL, I’ve seen better grammar from an illiterate homeless woman.
I’ve seen better humor detection from an illiterate homeless woman. Why are we ragging on illiterate homeless women?
I’m sorry, but what kind of professional writer makes such a grave grammatical mistake?
I was taught not to say “more better” or “more worse” when I was 4 years-old.
Maybe Carson has a learning disability. If so, then I apologize for making fun of him.
Hahah, Marc.
Keep on fightin the good fight there, buddy.
Why are you assuming it is in any way a mistake? You know the old saying about “assume”?
One who is making a deliberate grammar mistake for mild comic effect.
Cliff Lee has been punished by the gods of regression to the mean for Carson’s poor grammar.
Would you have preferred it if he’d said “A more betterer”? Would that have made it blatant enough for you?
Shut up! There is no humor in liberalism. Nobody is to be made fun of, ever!!! Unless you are not one of us!
In liberalism? Where did you pull that one from?
Caution: This question may be a trap, as I may already know the answer, anatomically speaking.
Cliff Lee has no wins. Give me a guy who gets Ws, like Kevin Millwood.
Jinx
To Lee AND Lincecum – turns out Timmy’s not a very good goalie himself.
Beavis works better with Butthead than head butts.