You can make an argument right now that Cliff Lee — the Texas Rangers’ Game 1 starter in the 2010 World Series — is among the best postseason pitchers ever, or certainly within the last few decades.

How does he do it?

Lee thrives not just because of fastball command, curveball movement and cut fastball usage — he’s very good in all respects — but also because of how he works the count. Lee was ahead in the count (36.3 percent of pitches) twice as often as he was behind in the count (18.4 percent of pitches) in 2010, demonstrating that he gets ahead early and often. He also averages 10.3 strikeouts per walk, which is the second-best ratio in baseball history.

Lee throws, basically, six specific pitches: four-seam fastball, two-seam fastball, cut fastball, changeup, curveball and slider. The cut fastball is a newer pitch for him, but it might already be among his most important: he used it on 19.8 percent of pitches this season.

If you break down Lee’s pitch selection by count and batter, the first trend that sticks out is the use of his fastballs; versus left-handed batters he throws the four-seamer 42.7 percent of the time — that’s the most for any one pitch — and against right-handed batters he throws the two-seamer 45.3 percent of the time — again, the most of any one pitch.

Aside from those two pitches, Lee distributes very evenly. He doesn’t throw curves (5.9 percent to righties, 3.9 percent to lefties) or sliders (0.2, 7.1) that often, but he mixes in changeups and cut fastballs adeptly.

Lee distributes his cutter pretty evenly no matter the count but uses the curveball on two-strike counts and pitcher’s counts, rarely throwing it otherwise. In fact, 78 percent of the curveballs he throws are on two-strike counts. Lee clearly uses his curveball as an out pitch, which induces a swinging strike the highest percentage compared to his other pitches.

In two-strike counts, Lee uses some variation of the fastball 75 percent of the time. Here’s how they break down placement-wise, starting with the four-seam. For these heat maps, the brighter the color, the more often the pitch ends up in that area. As you can see, Lee’s pitches are rarely in the middle of the plate:

Here’s the two-seam:

And here’s the cut fastball:

Lee is more willing to throw four-seamers inside or up and out of the zone to righties — while being more selective against lefties and throwing it into the strike zone. He is more selective with the two-seamer against righties but is also quite willing to throw the pitch inside on lefties. Lee tends to locate the cut fastball outside to both hitters on two-strike counts, painting the edge of the strike zone while mostly hitting the inside of the zone.

The two pitches that Lee gets the highest swinging strike percentages on are his curveball and changeup, particularly when he throws them against right-handed batters. Here’s a look at where Lee locates his breaking balls and where right-handed batters swing and miss (misses are the red dots):

Lee isn’t afraid to locate either pitch down the middle but tends to throw his changeup low, away and in the zone to righties. He is very successful at getting swinging strikes there. Lee’s changeup gets swinging strikes in the zone, while many of his swinging strikes on curveballs are down and out of the zone.

Cody Ross had a bit of a down year offensively, hitting .276 AVG/.333 OBP/.503 SLG between 2007 and 2009 with the Marlins while hitting .269/.322/.413 this season. His drop in power from 24 home runs in 2009 to 14 in 2010 is notable, leading to a career low in slugging percentage.

Yet it was the power and timely hitting of Ross, the eighth hitter in the lineup, which put the San Francisco Giants on the scoreboard en route to a 3-2 win over the Atlanta Braves to advance to the NLCS. Derek Lowe, a pitcher who has always been known to induce easy ground-ball outs with his sinker, had thrown five no-hit innings up to that point. Lowe unleashed a weapon that has mostly been his secondary pitch: the slider.

In his first at-bat against Lowe in the top of the third, Ross sat and waited for a pitch to hit. But after two called strikes, Lowe quickly struck him out swinging on the third, a breaking slider low and way out of the zone. To capture how deceptive Lowe’s slider was Monday night, Lowe had seven strikeouts and 14 swinging strikes, 10 of them on sliders before Ross’ next at-bat.

But in his second at-bat, Ross adjusted and came out swinging on the first pitch. His aggressive approach on his second chance against Lowe proved successful. He was able to capitalize on the only hanging slider that Lowe threw all day, hitting a first-pitch solo home run in the sixth inning. That was Lowe’s only mistake all night up to that point, and without run support from the Braves’ offense, Lowe could not afford such a mistake.

Taking a look at the game-changing plays of the day, Ross drove in the game-tying run in the sixth and what turned out to be the game-winning run in the seventh, an RBI single that came off an outside 96 mph sinker from Jonny Venters. Ross was able to get just enough wood on it to put it through the shortstop hole, driving in Buster Posey.

His ability to put pop on Lowe’s hanging slider gave the Giants a plus-18.2 percent increase in win probability added, while his single off the left-handed Venters gave them a plus-12.6 percent added chance of advancing to the NLCS. Ross led all players in the game, contributing a total of nearly plus-29 percent WPA to the Giants’ win.

Ross may have lost some power this season compared with last, but he apparently learned to hit sliders. According to FanGraphs’ pitch type values, Ross was below average against the slider every year until this season, when he was above average at hitting the slider in terms of runs.

Monday’s game showed just how tough baseball is: You can dominate for several innings just as Lowe did, but sometimes it’s the bottom of the lineup that gets to you. Ross did just that in Game 4, thrusting the Giants into the NLCS against the Phillies.

In case you haven’t heard, some folks are calling this the year of the pitcher. And the National League playoff will feature some of the best arms in the game, including Roy Halladay, Tim Lincecum, Tim Hudson, Aroldis Chapman and others.

Using Pitch f/x data — you can find out more about that here — we decided to take a look at these four hurlers and break down what makes them so nasty.

Halladay’s cutter

Halladay mixes and matches three effective pitches with movement: a mid-90s sinking two-seam fastball, a high-70s curveball and a low-90s cutter; he recently added a mid-80s changeup. Almost everything Halladay throws is a good pitch, but the cutter is his “out” pitch. He threw it more than 32 percent of the time this year — and got it for a strike more than 70 percent of the time.

To understand these graphs, think of them as a heat map. The “warmer” the color, the more often that’s where the ball is. It’s on a blue-red scale, where blue is “never” and red is “all the time.” So a yellow part of the plot would be a cluster of pitches in that specific area, while green is a smaller cluster.

Halladay’s cutter has a late, sharp sink to it, moving toward left-handed hitters and in the opposite direction of his sinker. With this type of movement, he uses the cutter more often against left-handed hitters, as the pitch gets in on their hands and is hard to drive. His new changeup gets batters to whiff more often, but the cutter puts the ball in play for easy groundouts.

Lincecum’s change

The Giants’ star is often complimented for the speed of his two-seam fastball given his height and weight — but Lincecum’s most deadly pitch is clearly the mid-80s changeup he throws 16.5 percent of the time against right-handed hitters and 25.8 percent of the time against left-handed hitters. Lincecum also has a high-70s curveball and a mid-80s slider that he mixes into his arsenal.

Lincecum gets right-handed hitters to whiff 25.4 percent of the time with his changeup, while left-handed hitters whiff 27.7 percent of the time on the same pitch both in and out of the strike zone. With both horizontal and vertical off-speed movement, Lincecum’s changeup is located slightly more inside to right-handed hitters than it is to left-handed hitters. It’s flat-out filthy.

Hudson’s sinker

Hudson throws two fastballs almost 70 percent of the time: a low-90s four-seam fastball and a high-80s, sinking two-seam fastball. On the other 30 percent of his pitches, Hudson mixes a variety of above-average off-speed pitches: a mid-70s curveball, a low-80s changeup and a mid-80s slider — and just for good measure, Hudson occasionally throws a mid-80s splitter and a high-80s cutter, allowing him to throw different pitches at different speeds that move in different directions. Hudson uses the slider against right-handed hitters and the splitter against left-handed hitters to induce swinging strikes. Nevertheless, the sinker is Hudson’s most used and most valuable pitch. He throws it more than 34 percent of the time to both righties and lefties.

Of the 472 outs by balls put in play Hudson recorded, 43.4 percent of them were due to the sinker. Hudson’s sinker moves toward right-handed hitters and away from left-handed hitters. It has the opposite effect of Halladay’s cutter, and he uses it more against righties to get in on their hands.

Chapman’s fastball

Chapman has thrown just 185 pitches this season, but the excitement is palpable whenever he shows up. His fastball was clocked at 105.1 mph earlier this year. That’s an insane speed for a ball to travel from a pitcher’s hand to a catcher’s mitt.

Because the above graph is harder to see at ESPN.com horizontal image widths, you can also open it at a bigger size, and in a new window, by clicking here.

Looking at the scatter plots above, we can see each fastball that Chapman threw, each of which is labeled by its speed and color-coded by pitch outcome. The 105.1 MPH fastball recorded on September 24 against Tony Gwynn Jr. is circled in red. In that particular at-bat (in which Gwynn struck out), he threw pitches at the following speeds: 102.6, 103.7, 102.5, 104.1, 105.1, 103.1, and 101.5 miles per hour. The plot on the right is a closer look at just the strike zone, showing numerous called strikes right down the middle of the plate. Bottom line: the guy throws straight gas. And it’s fun to watch.