Off the Cliff

When Cliff Lee won the Cy Young award with a dominant 22-3 record last season, anyone paying attention had to know that he'd regress this year. So far, he's 2-6. So last year was a fluke.

Not.

In fact, surprisingly, he's pitched almost as well as he did last year. Really.

Lee has a 3.14 RA. That's ERA without regard for whether runs are "earned" or "unearned." Careful observers of the game have noticed that errors are but a small subset of defensive plays that could go either way depending on the fielder. Parsing out only those plays tilts the record in a fairly arbitrary way.

Moreover, the whole system of errors and earned runs is a swirl of capriciousness, from biased official scorers to transparently silly rules. Here's just one example: An error on a two-out play renders all succeeding runs "unearned," even those that are clearly the pitcher's responsibility. Even worse: pitchers get an ERA pass for runs created by errors they have committed.

So Lee's 3.14 RA, which ranks seventh in the AL this year, would have placed him third at the end of last season behind Daiske Matsusaka and...Cliff Lee. But his low 2009 RA is deceiving: he stumbled out of the gate, giving up 11 runs and 17 hits in his first two starts. Since then, he's channeled the '08 (not to mention the '05) Cliff Lee, relinquishing a stingy two runs a game.

But even RA has much to apologize for. It makes no provision for defense and is heavily influenced by the quality of relief pitching. It doesn't account for the parks a pitcher pitches in or the quality of opponents he faces.

Fortuntely, Progressive Field (nee': The Jake) is a fairly neutral park for run scoring and Lee's opponent roster, while considerably easier than Roy Halladay's -- who pitches in the brutal AL East --is nonetheless unremarkable. The Indian defense this year, according to the advanced metrics devised by the eggheads at Baseball Prospectus, has been just a tad below average. So let's dig deeper and see how he's doing.

Lee is eating 6 2/3rds innings per start and striking out 3 1/2 times as many batters as he walks. His 6.5 K per nine innings is another positive. Lee is putting way too many runners on base -- his 1.42 WHIP borders on lousy -- but he's offsetting some of that by keeping the ball in the park. Four home runs in 74 innings is excellent, and reminiscent of last year.

All this indicates that Lee is taking care of business on his end -- walks and home runs are entirely the province of the pitcher -- but being victimized by seeing-eye singles and bloop doubles. Ironically, this is the resume of a ground ball pitcher, but Lee tends towards the flyball. I don't really know what to make of that, but it appears all in all that his strong showing is the real thing.

Still, 2-6 stinks, right? Sure, but it's a team game, and the team around Lee in Cleveland gives him less support than his jock strap. In his last five outings, the Indians have plated a grand total of seven runs, en route to the worst record in the AL so far. Their power core -- Hafner, Sizemore, Peralta and Garko -- have socked 18 home runs combined, two more than the Rays' Carlos Pena.

In baseball, luck tends to even out over time. Lee withdrew a lifetime's share from the karma bank last year, so maybe he's paying it back in '09. But pitching deep into games, striking guys out and keeping the ball in the park are a great foundation for success. If he keeps it up, he'll have a great year, whether or not his won-loss record reflects it.

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