12 March 2018

Chris Lee - Who Knows Best?


Chris Lee - Baseball America's #10 Orioles prospect. Photo courtesy Norfolk Tides / Scott Sears.
If we thought about baseball before the 2017 season the way we did in 1985, most Orioles fans would have regarded Chris Lee as a top pitching prospect. He was left-handed, 6'3" tall (well, he is left-handed and 6'3"right now, too), weighed 180 lbs, and had an above-average sinking fastball and an occasionally-plus slider. More importantly, he had made 14 starts (between 2015 and 2016) at AA Bowie, pitching 89 innings with a 3.02 ERA. He had missed the last three months of the 2016 season with a strained shoulder, but he was considered recovered.

However, baseball fans have become more sophisticated. Beneath the superficially attractive AA statistics were a truly terrible pair of numbers - a 33-45 walk-strikeout ratio and a strikeout rate of 4.53 strikeouts per nine innings. These numbers are well below average, and I - like many other more statistically-oriented fans and analysts - questioned the thinking of prospect raters such as Baseball America, who ranked Lee as one of the top ten prospects in the Orioles system.

So, when an apparently-healthy Chris Lee was assigned to the Norfolk Tides for the 2017 season and put in their starting rotation, I was hoping to see him. To be honest, I was hoping his performance would reflect his strikeout and walk numbers as opposed to his ERA. I admit that I dream of knowing more about baseball than some of the professionals. So I hoped that Chris Lee's 2017 performance would justify my thinking that he wasn't much of a prospect. I emphasize that I had and have nothing against Chris Lee either personally or professionally; the negative effects on his career would just be collateral damage in a clash between my opinion and expert opinion. And, his overall performance in 2017 was almost everything I was hoping for - a 5.17 ERA; 54 walks and 144 hits allowed in 116 innings; only 6.42 strikeouts per nine innings.

(All data relating to Chris Lee's performance come from either baseballamerica.com, milb.com, or from my own calculations from my own scoresheets.)

But there was something peculiar. I saw six of Chris Lee's 2017 games - four (the first four below) starts and 2 relief appearances. And the Chris Lee I saw was a lot better than the overall Chris Lee:

Date
Opponent
IP
H
R
ER
BB
K
April 26 (G1)
Buffalo
6
5
0
0
1
4
May 19
Charlotte
6
4
1
1
3
6
June 3
Rochester
5
8
5
4
1
5
June 30
Durham
6
2
0
0
3
1
July 27
SWB
4
1
1
0
3
2
August 22
Charlotte
2 2/3
4
2
2
2
1

SWB: Scranton/Wilkes-Barre

That's 29 2/3 innings with a 2.12 ERA. His 13/19 strikeout--walk ratio isn't good, nor is his 5.76 strikeouts per nine innings. On the other hand, instead of allowing 11.14 hits per nine innings, in these games he allowed 7.28. It's not a huge sample size - but it does represent over 25% of his season's innings. The games were played at Harbor Park, well-known as a pitcher's park. He did face two of the less-potent offenses in the International League (Buffalo and Rochester), as well as Charlotte (a middle-of-the-pack offense boosted by its hitter-friendly home park) - but also faced the best and third-best offenses in the league. On the whole, other than Harbor Park, there's no obvious reason why Chris Lee was so much better in the games I saw than overall.

Basically, there are three logical explanations - either the four very good games I saw Chris Lee pitch are extreme outliers and in every other game he was poor; or he had a few really terrible starts that inflated his statistics; or some combination of the two.

Looking at his game log for the 2107 season, there are five really terrible performances that skew the rest of his season:

Date
Opponent
IP
H
R
ER
BB
K
April 8
At Charlotte
3 1/3
9
8
8
2
1
May 24
At Toledo
2
7
6
4
1
1
May 29
At Columbus
2 2/3
6
8
8
2
2
June 25
At Gwinnett
3 1/3
9
8
7
2
2
July 5
At Gwinnett
4 1/3
9
7
7
4
1

Those five games - in which he posted a 19.53 ERA - obviously had a major impact on his overall performance. If we throw out the four outstanding games I saw personally (April 26, May 19, June 30, and July 27) and these five terrible games, his performance was 71 innings with a 3.17 ERA. I have to conclude that the Chris Lee I saw is representative of what he's capable of - his 2017 season was overly influenced by five terrible games.

When evaluating Chris Lee, we shouldn't throw those five games out - that's part of what he did. Nor should we ignore his other negatives; his relatively poor control and strikeout rates. But, in 2017, I was watching Chris Lee, expecting a train wreck. If Chris Lee will return to Norfolk for 2018, I'll be interested in seeing him again - but this time expecting someone who, even if not a major-league pitcher, a pitcher who will help my AAA team win a few games.

6 comments:

  1. AnonymousMarch 12, 2018 at 7:45 AM

    Joe, sounds to me like you're saying Wade Miley was not so bad a pitcher and we should take a second look at him. If you saw him early in the season, you would have liked the results even if you saw the awful number of walks. I'm not sure you can take the bad part of a pitcher's performance out and say that he's not so bad. One thing I didn't see you mention were stats like strand rates and BABIP against. These statistics influenced by luck may give you the answers you're looking for. If his strand rates and BABIP against show a lot of luck during his good performances then his good statistics may be a mirage. If, however, he shows a horrible strand rate and BABIP against in his bad performances then you might be able to say that he's worth a look at the MLB level. His Spring has not been so good.

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  2. PipMarch 12, 2018 at 7:33 PM

    I am still interested in why we chose to keep Lee over Andrew Triggs.
    There really doesn't seem to be any justification. Yes, Triggs was dumped three seasons ago, and was injured last year, but he was a valuable member of the Athletics rotation two years ago, and expects to be again this season, and Lee has shown exactly nothing, and he is injured now himself.
    The question is not moot, because the logic that led to keeping the wrong guy needs to be analyzed.

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    Replies
    1. Jon ShepherdMarch 12, 2018 at 9:57 PM

      With Orioles he was a sinker slider pitcher whose slider was not great. His game was primarily deception with a low arm slot. When he went to the As he struggled in theb oen, was given a starting slot and stuck. It seemed with a little tinkering and a starting perspective that his slider turned plus and is a real swing and miss pitch.

      Anyway, Orioles liked their right handed options on the 40 man roster and dropped him for Pedro Alvarez.

      Delete
    2. PipMarch 12, 2018 at 11:55 PM

      Thank you for that comment, howevereven if he wasn't "all that" did Lee really offer that much more? It was obviously a bad decision in hindsight, and Lee hasn't given any indication is ever going to be anything.

      Delete
    3. Jon ShepherdMarch 13, 2018 at 6:59 AM

      Scouts liked Lee. Many still do.
      Lee was considered a fringe top ten Orioles prospect at that time. Triggs was considered a limited organizational guy who might give you a cup of coffee. The issue was that no one could foresee that he would be able to sharpen his control even more and nail down that slider. Two pitch pitchers with a good sinker and a meh slider are quite common. Triggs found another gear. I don't think anyone expected it. Sometimes things happen and there is no lesson.

      Delete
  3. UnknownMarch 13, 2018 at 9:00 AM

    #Roger: Of course you must consider all of a pitcher's performance in evaluating him. In fact, that's the first sentence of my last paragraph. However, your Miley example is exactly the opposite situation. In Lee's case, I am curious to see whether a few bad performances skewed his overall statistical line too negatively - much like the 2017 Chris Archer. Your claim for Miley is that a few good performances shouldn't skew our interpretation too positively. I agree.

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