Cliff Lee is the Balls

(BOD - Kate Mara)

Cliff Lee produced an ever more dominating performance last night than he did in Game 1 and this time, luckily, his outing would not be overshadowed by a Roy Halladay no-hitter. After a somewhat shaky start and struggles with his command, Lee settled down to unfurl the following stat line: 9IP, 6H, 0BB, 1ER and 11K.

(I should make a caveat for describing Lee’s ‘control’ problems. Most pitchers struggling with command, Tewks included, have trouble throwing strikes when that happens and pitches are all over the place. I usually send a few pitches to the backstop to make things interesting for my catcher. Cliff Lee’s control issues means that he’s throwing pitches over the middle of the plate instead of on the corners. He doesn’t know how to throw balls).

I could go on and on about Cliff Lee and my burgeoning mancrush, but I actually want to juxtapose both starting pitchers last night and describe, from a pitcher’s perspective, what I see from both guys.

Since both Cliff Lee and David Price are left-handed, it makes the comparison much more apt. I’ve watched David Price throw two starts in the past week and I must say that I’m not exactly impressed by his ability as a pitcher.

Yes, he can throw unbelievably hard and the ball just seems to explode out of his hand, but I’m not seeing much else. A significant number of fastballs drifted high and outside to right-handed batters and it seemed like Price had trouble staying on top of the ball.

Plus, his breaking stuff was pretty much non-existent or, at least, not consistent enough to make the Rangers hitters look for anything other than a fastball. Now, I’m not saying it’s easy to just sit on a 97 mile an hour fastball with life (I have trouble sitting on batting practice pitches), but great hitters will eventually be able to time it when they don’t have to worry about breaking stuff being thrown for strikes.

To me, Price is a thrower not a pitcher. However, it just so happens that he throws hard enough that he can still be successful. For now. And evidently, not when it counts.

In the early innings last night, Lee just pumped fastballs and cutters at the Rays with mixed success. It wasn’t until he began mixing in his terrific curveball that he really began dominating Tampa Bay. You could see it in the Rays swings; once they knew Lee could throw the curveball for strikes, they could not longer look for the hard stuff and they started swinging and missing on fastballs because the curve was in the back of their minds.

Unfortunately, I’m a little concerned about the Rangers in their series against the Yankees when it became clear that Lee won’t be able to start until Game 3 of the ALCS. That means he’ll at most only be able to throw twice in the series and that’s if the Rangers can force it to a sixth or seventh game.

No more baseball until the weekend. What the hell am I supposed to write about now?