Behind The Mastery Of Cliff Lee

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.