Cliff Lee?!

In doing research for this post, I found this little ditty:

June 27, 2002: Traded by the Montreal Expos with Brandon Phillips, Grady Sizemore, and Lee Stevens to the Cleveland Indians for Bartolo Colon and Tim Drew.

Boy, the Indians sure are reaping the benefits of that now (or would be if they hadn't traded Phillips). The A's are hoping for the kind of returns from the Haren deal, but that's a side point. Cliff Lee right now is the hottest pitcher in baseball, with a Hunt for Red October low .067 ERA so far and a 6-0 record in 7 starts. He's the real reason the Indians are doing well--apparently they have a Cy Young winner too, but his stats aren't as good.

What has lead to this sudden rise? Lee was good in 2005, with an 18 win season and a 3.79 ERA. People looked at Lee at that season as a bit of a fluke, and saw him more as a solid innings eater. Let's look at a few things:

1) He's being more aggressive. His strikeouts are up and his walks are down. In 2005 his K/9 was 6.36, and now his K/9 is 7.47, which is quite good. He's also only walked 4 guys in his 50+ IP this year, which is absolutely ridiculous. This, a 2% drop in 3-0 counts, and a 3% jump from his average in Strikeout% (according to baseballreference.com) show he's being more aggressive and going after guys. Such a low walk rate is ridiculous, and uses the Indians defense to his advantage.

2) His bullpen is better. Listen to this little blurb from Baseball Prospectus:
In the middle four months of 2006, nearly half of Lee`s quality starts were blown by the bullpen after the sixth inning (five of 12, in 23 starts overall).
Borowski is fortunately injured, so the Indians instead have the more qualified Rafael Betancourt, and being set up by Rafael Perez and Masa Kobayashi. This bullpen won't blow his leads.

3) He's older, and more seasoned. He's 29, and should probably be peaking at this point quite frankly. The years of bouncing back and forth between success and failure probably have seasoned him a bit, and he may not be as prone to emotional swings. His pitches/Plate Appearance are up 4.02 from his average 3.81, and he still gets out and doesn't walk guys. This to me shows poise.

Only a fool would think Cliff Lee can keep his sub 1.00 ERA, but it's not unreasonable to think he's capable of a very good season--even Cy Young caliber. He's doing all the right things, it's really just a matter now of seeing whether or not batters can catch up to him.