[...]“drawing out at-bats” doesn’t work against Lee. His career walks-per-nine-innings is 2.2, but in the playoffs it’s 1.1. Waiting for a mistake is like waiting for the Rays to build a new stadium. Not gonna happen.
So assuming he throws strikes – a safe assumption – leads to the question of which strikes to anticipate. And since his cutter is lethal, especially when his back is healthy, it’s smart to look for fastballs.
It turns out 78 percent of Lee’s first pitches are fastballs. If you want a pitch that isn’t a slider or curve, your chances are highest on the first pitch. And since 70 percent of Lee’s first pitches are strikes – the highest percentage in baseball – he’s basically giving every hitter one pitch of relative calm before the storm of nastiness.That sounds like a great strategy except if it was that easy you'd expect hitters to have figured it out by now. The strategy against good pitchers (or pitchers in general) is to wait for a pitch to hit, not necessarily a mistake because guys like Cliff Lee just don't make too many mistakes. So, while Cliff Lee is throwing strikes early and often on fastballs, I doubt they are pitches that hitters can hit. Surely you don't want to wait and fall behind 0-1 or 0-2 but at the same time you don't want to roll over on a fastball on the black, just because Lee is throwing it for a strike.
While I'd argue there is no real "strategy" for hitting a pitcher like Cliff Lee, judging by the way he has pitched recently and how the Rays looked against him in game 1, this strategy seems as good of a way to approach him as anything else.
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