Lee wastes no time in baffling the Dodgers
PHILADELPHIA – Cliff Lee(notes) spent 43 minutes, give or take a few seconds, on the pitchers' mound Sunday night. TBS spent nearly an hour of the National League Championship Series airing commercials. One was far more entertaining than the other.
Cliff Lee is 2-0 with an 0.74 ERA in three postseason starts this year.
(Getty Images)
Rare is the night a dominant pitcher takes less tube time than the advertising he helps sell, though rare, too, is the sort of performance Lee put on in the Philadelphia Phillies' 11-0 shellacking of the Los Angeles Dodgers. No one had ever thrown at least eight shutout innings with three or fewer hits, no walks and at least 10 strikeouts in the postseason. Lee dizzied the sellout crowd at Citizens Bank Park – not to mention the Dodgers, who fell behind in the best-of-seven series 2-1 – with efficiency that bordered on cruel and urgency to match.
"I work fast, I throw strikes, things happen," Lee said. "When bad things happen, you slow it down, but working fast is good. Everyone likes it."
Except the Dodgers, of course, who mustered three singles and spent the rest of the evening helping Lee get his beauty rest. The Phillies blitzed Hiroki Kuroda(notes) for six runs in the first two innings, which ended an hour after the game began. Lee spent just 10 minutes on the mound.
All game it was like that. Except for a 10-minute seventh inning – slacker – Lee never took more than six minutes to dispatch the Dodgers. He threw. They flailed. Fait accompli.
"Cliff is some kind of phenom," said Phillies starter Pedro Martinez(notes), who can speak from such experience. "It's just something beautiful to watch. From the outside, especially, when you can see the little details. See, pitching is like an art. And Cliff is actually doing that like one of the best."
So who is he? Lee is too straightforward to be Picasso, too varied to be Rembrandt. Maybe the comparison should be to Banksy, the British graffiti artist, who produces remarkable work in little time.
And Lee tagged the Dodgers bad, thieving all the energy from their comeback victory in Game 2 and stifling it in a blinding sea of uniformity. That's the thing about Lee: Every pitch looks the same. His right knee lifts to the same height. His left arm descends from the same angle. His delivery comes at the same speed. When Lee struggled so mightily during the 2007 season with Cleveland and ended up at Triple-A, he lost two of his greatest assets: tempo and rhythm. They are symbiotic, one relying on the other, and when either goes, so does Lee's effectiveness. In 2008, on the way to winning the American League Cy Young award, he rediscovered the speed at which he delivered pitches (tempo), which allowed the rest of his motion to sync up (rhythm).
"He always has good rhythm," Phillies starter Cole Hamels(notes) said. "And momentum comes from that. If you're smart enough and good enough, you can actually control it. A lot of it is because he throws strikes. Throws strikes. Throws strikes. Throws strikes."
Got that? Lee throws strikes, and lots of them. Only Johan Santana(notes) and Roy Halladay(notes) bested his 68.2 percent this season, and Lee's strike percentage of 70.6 with the Phillies would have led the major leagues. While only two-thirds of his 114 pitches Sunday went for strikes, it's the constant threat of Lee being around the plate that so intimidates opponents.
That, and his ability to throw six pitches for strikes. When Philadelphia acquired Lee at the trading deadline for four prospects – a coup by GM Ruben Amaro Jr. that looks smarter by the day – the Phillies' players weren't familiar enough with Lee to realize what he brought. Paul Bako(notes) caught Lee's first six starts and felt like he needed an extra hand to signal pitches. Lee throws two- and four-seam fastballs, a cut fastball, a changeup, a curveball and a slider – and does so differently than most left-handers.
The majority, Bako said, "work backward" – that is, use their secondary pitches to set up their fastballs. Because of Lee's powerful 93-mph fastball, Bako said, "he's more like a right-hander, only he still has that finesse like a lefty."
"When he's making pitches, it's a joke," Bako said. "No matter how good the lineup is, they will not hit him. It's got nothing to do with them."
The Dodgers can attest. A game after Martinez shut them out for seven innings, Lee humbled them further. It was bad enough watching their starting pitcher bungle the game before he could escape the second. And seeing Ryan Howard(notes) and Pedro Feliz(notes) – a combined 464 pounds of girth – each lope around the bases for triples. Or hearing the crowd of 45,721 erupt at home runs from Jayson Werth(notes) and Shane Victorino(notes), the latter of which kept Lee from going for the shutout.
Phillies manager Charlie Manuel had every intention of allowing him to do so. Lee batted in the eighth inning, knocked a single into center field and scored on Victorino's home run. By that point, enough was enough, and Manuel sent Chad Durbin(notes) out to finish the Dodgers' misery.
Which was exacerbated by the reality that they, too, coveted Lee at the trade deadline. Dodgers brass thought it offered Cleveland a better package of prospects than the Phillies. Were Lee a Dodger, the worries over their rotation wouldn't seem nearly as well-founded.
As is, they're concerned, as well they should be. And the Phillies are, transitively, loose as a plumber's jeans. They joked in the dugout, Lee included. They carried themselves with the assurance of defending World Series champions, which they happen to be. They didn't even need to blast music in the winning clubhouse, a staple around baseball.
The only sound that emanated came from shortstop Jimmy Rollins'(notes) locker. The song: Jay-Z's "Empire State of Mind."
Whether that was merely coincidence or portent – the Yankees do look awfully good – is a question best left to conspiracy theorists. Though even the thought piqued the interest of one inquisitor, who skipped all bounds of pretense and straight-up asked Howard what it might be like to face CC Sabathia(notes) in the World Series.
"Wow," Howard said, and he didn't bite much more than that. The Phillies still have work to do. Their starter for Game 4 tonight, Joe Blanton(notes), might outlast TBS' commercials in one inning. Hamels, who was mediocre in Game 1, will return for a potential clincher or a decisive swing game.
If need be, Lee would take the mound again in Game 6. No pitcher this postseason has been better. And none, certainly, can spin such magic in less than three-quarters of an hour.
