RotoSavants

With Cliff Lee winning his 20th game last night and having an all around great season I thought we should review what I think will be the outlook for 2009 with Cliff based on his splits. Cliff has had several up and down years shaking out to an overall 4.15 ERA. His worst seasons are usually marked by a loss of control with a jump in BB/9 and bad luck. His worst seasons in 2004 and 2007 had BB/9 of 4.07 and 3.33 respectively. Also in 2007 which was a disaster for Cliff he had several factors of bad luck. His xBABIP was .270 and he had a BABIP of .313 so a few extra hits to go with the walks, but he also had a LOB% of 62.5% which is way to low and resulted in a lot of extra runs.

This year Lee has shown great improvement in his control and held it all year. His current K/BB for 2008 is an astounding 5.52. His BABIP and LOB% are near normal and do not show a lot of room for regression. He is also getting GB at a higher rate which is decreasing his homers against, but this is the one area that concerns me most is his HR/FB. His current HR/FB is 4.0% which is way off from the league average around 10-12%. I doubt this will change very much in 2008, but if he had a HR/FB of 10% right now he would have ~20 homers instead of just 8. Without accounting for runners on base this adds a minimum of 12 runs to his total. This change gives him a ERA of 2.87 and a FIP of 3.46.

This is more of what I would put as an expectation of Cliff for 2009. Giving him a ERA of 3.46 would equate him to Jon Lester this year. Lester has had a bit less control in BB/9, but checks in with an ERA of 3.41 and a FIP of 3.66. Between the two you should be able to sneak Lester much later in most leagues and gain similar value once Lee's luck evens out.