Players · L · Pitcher · 2014 regular season

Cliff Lee

Philadelphia Phillies National League East

Age: 36
B/T: L/L
Height: 6' 3"
Weight: 205 lb
Number: #33

Born: August 30, 1978 in Benton, AR, United States
MLB debut: September 15, 2002

Compare with…vs Clayton Kershaw vs Justin Verlander vs Max Scherzer

dbWAR: 42.4
IP: 81.1
ERA: 3.65
FIP: 2.96
K/9: 8.0
FIP−: 79

Cliff Lee was a starting pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies. In 2014 he struck out 72 batters over 81.1 innings across 13 appearances, 13 of them starts, going 4-5. His ERA of 3.65 was 2.4% lower than the league average of 3.74 — 5th of 13 on his team, and 238th of 477 among MLB pitchers with 20+ innings. Stripping out defence, his 2.96 FIP suggests he pitched better than his ERA shows. He missed bats on 18.3% of swings (8.5% of every pitch he threw), walked 3.4% of the batters he faced and struck out 20.5%. His 1.7 dbWAR is built from that FIP rather than runs allowed, so it credits him for what he controls and not for the defence behind him.

League context

Percentile among qualified pitchers, 2014 regular season.

FIP2.96

K/98.0

WHIP1.38

WAR1.7

WAR by season

Pitching Regular season

Standard and advanced, by season. Regular-season games only — postseason games are listed separately below. Seasons on file run 2005–2014; his career began in 2002, and earlier seasons are not in this data yet.


2014	PHI	13	13	81.1	4	5	100	33	72	12	3.65	2.96	1.38	8.0	1.3	98	79	1.7
2013	PHI	31	31	222.2	14	8	193	71	222	32	2.87	2.82	1.01	9.0	1.3	74	73	5.6
2012	PHI	30	30	211.0	6	9	207	74	207	28	3.16	3.13	1.11	8.8	1.2	79	78	4.6
2011	PHI	32	32	232.2	17	8	197	62	238	42	2.40	2.60	1.03	9.2	1.6	61	66	6.4
2010	TEX/SEA	28	28	212.1	12	9	195	75	185	18	3.18	2.58	1.00	7.8	0.8	78	63	6.3
2009	CLE/PHI	34	34	231.2	14	13	245	83	181	43	3.22	3.11	1.24	7.0	1.7	75	72	5.6
2008	CLE	31	31	223.1	22	3	214	63	170	34	2.54	2.83	1.11	6.9	1.4	59	65	6.4
2007	CLE	20	16	97.1	5	8	112	68	66	36	6.29	5.48	1.52	6.1	3.3	141	122	0.0
2006	CLE	33	33	200.2	14	11	224	98	129	58	4.40	4.73	1.41	5.8	2.6	97	104	1.8
2005	CLE	32	32	202.0	18	5	194	85	143	52	3.79	3.79	1.22	6.4	2.3	88	88	3.3

Batting Regular season


2014	PHI	11	25	6	0	1	0	0	9	.250	.250	.250	.000	.400	0.0%	36.0%	.224	-1.7	38	0.2
2013	PHI	29	72	11	0	6	0	2	25	.183	.210	.233	.050	.314	2.8%	34.7%	.200	-6.5	17	0.2
2012	PHI	30	71	10	0	4	1	1	23	.156	.169	.188	.031	.244	1.4%	32.4%	.159	-8.9	-10	0.1
2011	PHI	34	82	15	2	7	1	1	26	.200	.208	.307	.107	.271	1.2%	31.7%	.226	-6.0	35	0.4
2010	SEA	1	3	0	0	0	0	0	2	.000	.000	.000	.000	.000	0.0%	66.7%	.000	-0.8	-132	-0.0
2009	PHI/CLE	15	41	7	0	1	0	1	14	.184	.205	.237	.053	.292	2.4%	34.1%	.200	-4.4	10	0.1
2008	CLE	2	5	0	0	0	0	0	4	.000	.000	.000	.000	.000	0.0%	80.0%	.000	-1.4	-128	-0.1
2007	CLE	2	5	0	0	0	0	0	2	.000	.000	.000	.000	.000	0.0%	40.0%	.000	-1.4	-122	-0.1
2006	CLE	2	6	1	0	0	0	0	3	.167	.167	.167	.000	.333	0.0%	50.0%	.150	-0.9	-26	-0.0
2005	CLE	3	8	0	0	0	0	0	2	.000	.000	.000	.000	.000	0.0%	25.0%	.000	-2.2	-130	-0.1

Separate from the regular season

Postseason Postseason

Wild Card through World Series. These games are counted on their own: none of them are in the regular-season tables, career totals, league context, leaderboards or dbWAR on this page.

Postseason pitching

Postseason Cliff Lee's postseason pitching, by October and round. Not part of any regular-season figure on this page.
Season	Team	Round	G	GS	IP	W	L	H	ER	HR	BB	SO	ERA	WHIP	K/9
2011 Post	PHI	NLDS	1	1	6.0	0	1	12	5	0	2	9	7.50	2.33	13.5
2010 Post	TEX	Postseason total	5	5	35.2	3	2	27	11	2	2	47	2.78	0.81	11.9
		ALDS	2	2	16.0	2	0	11	2	1	0	21	1.13	0.69	11.8
		ALCS	1	1	8.0	1	0	2	0	0	1	13	0.00	0.38	14.6
		World Series	2	2	11.2	0	2	14	9	1	1	13	6.94	1.29	10.0
2009 Post	PHI	Postseason total	5	5	40.1	4	0	27	7	0	6	33	1.56	0.82	7.4
		NLDS	2	2	16.1	1	0	11	2	0	3	10	1.10	0.86	5.5
		NLCS	1	1	8.0	1	0	3	0	0	0	10	0.00	0.38	11.3
		World Series	2	2	16.0	2	0	13	5	0	3	13	2.81	1.00	7.3
2005–2014		Postseason total · 3 Octobers	11	11	82.0	7	3	66	23	2	10	89	2.52	0.93	9.8

Postseason batting

Postseason Cliff Lee's postseason batting, by October and round. Not part of any regular-season figure on this page.
Season	Team	Round	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	SO	SB	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
2011 Post	PHI	NLDS	1	2	2	0	0	0	1	0	.000	.000	.000	.000
2010 Post	TEX	World Series	1	2	2	0	1	1	0	0	.500	.500	1.000	1.500
2009 Post	PHI	Postseason total	4	13	11	1	3	0	4	1	.273	.273	.273	.545
		NLDS	2	6	5	0	1	0	2	1	.200	.200	.200	.400
		NLCS	1	4	3	1	1	0	1	0	.333	.333	.333	.667
		World Series	1	3	3	0	1	0	1	0	.333	.333	.333	.667
2005–2014		Postseason total · 3 Octobers	6	17	15	1	4	1	5	1	.267	.267	.333	.600

Box-score and rate statistics only. wOBA, wRC+, FIP and dbWAR are measured against a full league season, and a postseason is a few teams playing each other for a month, so they are not computed for October.

Platoon splits

How left- and right-handed hitters fare against him.

Season

Opponent batting by the side the hitter bats from, 2014. Counted from play-by-play, so totals can differ from the box-score season line by a plate appearance or two.
Split	PA	AB	H	HR	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	wOBA	K%
vs LHB	66	63	15	1	0	18	.238	.250	.286	.241	27.3%
vs RHB	287	267	85	6	12	54	.318	.344	.468	.359	18.8%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2014.

Loading 16 batted balls…

Hot and cold zones

Batting average by pitch location, 2014.

Below averageLeague averageAbove average

Batting average by location of the pitch that ended each plate appearance, catcher's view. The bordered square is the strike zone; the outer band is chase territory. Cells with fewer than 8 at-bats are left grey rather than shown as signal. League average on the same attribution is .251.

Pitch sequencing

What Cliff Lee throws in each count, and what he follows each pitch with. Select any cell for the breakdown.

ShowBatter

SinkerFour-seamChangeupCutterCurveballSlider

Select a count to see exactly what Cliff Lee throws in it.

Pitch arsenal

What he throws, how hard, how often it misses, and what hitters do with it.

Season


Sinker	35.1%	447	89.7	2,407	49.2%	9.9%	114	.298	.729
Four-Seam Fastball	21.9%	279	89.4	2,294	52.3%	13.1%	67	.358	.875
Changeup	20.6%	262	83.1	2,003	43.5%	35.0%	70	.143	.367
Cutter	14.4%	183	86.0	1,576	38.8%	10.5%	55	.455	1.155
Curveball	5.7%	72	73.7	1,727	44.4%	23.5%	18	.222	.778
Slider	2.3%	29	79.9	790	65.5%	38.1%	7	—	—

Cliff Lee's arsenal by usage. Velocity is average release speed in mph, spin in rpm, and whiff rate is misses per swing — the cleanest single measure of whether a pitch beats hitters. BAA and OPS are what hitters did against each pitch, credited to the one that ended the plate appearance, and are left blank under 15 at-bats.

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Similar players

Nearest 2014 seasons by command, run prevention and role, on rate statistics rather than totals.

TJ HouseCLE

ERA: 3.35
FIP: 3.69
SO: 80
WAR: 1.2

Brandon McCarthyAZ

ERA: 4.05
FIP: 3.55
SO: 175
WAR: 3.0

Bartolo ColonNYM

ERA: 4.09
FIP: 3.57
SO: 151
WAR: 2.6

Nathan EovaldiMIA

ERA: 4.37
FIP: 3.37
SO: 142
WAR: 3.2

How these are computed

wOBA uses linear weights measured from this season's own play-by-play rather than published constants, and wRC+ is park-adjusted against that same league. dbWAR is our own open implementation — not fWAR or bWAR — and the full derivation, including its simplifications, is on the methodology page.