This is going to be painful
Cliff Lee threw 120 pitches to beat the Rays last night. He faced 33 batters, so, obviously, he threw 33 first pitches. Can you follow me? I’m going through the pitch-by-pitch data on baseball-reference to determine how many times the Rays swung at the first pitch, and what happened, and all so I can continue to make fun of this same dummy.
I think I need a hobby.
By my reading of the data — and it’s fucking hard to read, let me tell you — the Rays swung at Lee’s first pitch 12 times, which is just about bang-on 36%. The results of those twelve swings are as follows:
• Five swinging strikes
• Four foul balls
• Three outs
That’s it. Nobody ever got a hit swinging at Cliff Lee’s first pitch. Ever. Good fucking plan, Eric!
Wait, it gets better. You know how many first-pitch balls Cliff Lee threw, not counting would-have-been balls that the Rays swung at? Ten. That’s 30% of the time even if you assume that all twelve of the pitches the Rays swung at were strikes; BR doesn’t break the data out quite that far (and hell if I’m going searching, since, quite frankly, my point is made and right now I’m just piling on), but I’m inclined to think that maybe one or two of those twelve swung-on pitches missed the zone. How about you?
So, in conclusion: good work, Eric Adelson! You promoted a strategy that, based on the actual outcome of the actual game, appears as though it minimised the team’s chances to win the game. You sir are a credit to your race.
Edit: I’m not going through the whole thing again, but I checked the data for the first game, and all those first-pitch swings the Rays tried that game resulted in exactly one hit. It was a single. It did not score their only run, neither did it put on base a man who would score that run.
That run was a solo homer. This is not included in Eric Adelson’s weird "SLG when the ball is put in play" cherry-pick stat.
