Cliff Lee pitched eight innings against the Cincinnati Reds last night, striking out eight hitters, walking one, giving up four runs, and recording his fourth win of the year. None of that should seem surprising. He did given up 10 hits, but to be honest Lee does that from time to time. He’s already done it once this year, he did it four times last year, and six times in 2009. Sometimes guys with great control give up a bunch of hits, it happens.
What is surprising about Lee’s performance last night is this: he went 2-for-4 with a double and three RBIs. In Lee’s entire career at the plate leading up to Thursday, he had just 12 hits, two doubles, and one RBI. That’s pretty literally a career night at the plate for Mr. Lee and it got my wheels churning a bit. Just how often do pitchers drive in three runs in a game? And what happens when they do it?
Baseball-Reference’s Play Index says that since the introduction of the designated hitter in 1973, 288 pitchers have driven in at least three runs. Robert Person leads the pack with 7 RBIs against the Expos in 2002 and only eight pitchers (Person, Chris Carpenter, Micah Owings, Jason Marquis, Shawn Estes, Danny Jackson, Larry Christaneson, and Bob Gibson) have had five or more. Another 60 have driven in four runs and the other 221 have driven in three exactly. Not counting Lee or Reds’ Travis Wood (he’s the only other pitcher to drive in three thus far in 2011; he did it against the Astros earlier this month), that’s an average of between 7 and 8 pitchers per year with a 3+ RBI game.
Here’s the fun part, though. How often do you think having a pitcher drive in three runs results in a win? The logical guess is that it’s a pretty regular occurance since the hitter is almost always the worst hitter in the lineup. In fact, of the 288 pitchers that have driven in three runs in a game, a whopping 259 of them did it in games that their team won (that’s not to say games in which they recorded a win, which is harder to track since the Play Index splits up pitching stats and hitting stats, just that teams that have a pitcher that drives in three runs win 260 of 288 times, though then again there are probably one or two occasions in which two pitchers have driven in three runs for the same team in the same game, which is also harder to parse out and … you get the point). That means that when pitchers drive in three or more runs, their team wins roughly 90% of the time. Lee’s Phillies were no exception to that rule; they blew the Reds out 10-4.
Also last night: The Red Sox rolled to another big win, Nolan Reimold went bananas in the Orioles 12 inning win over the Royals, and there were a few other games on an otherwise short-scheduled night.
What to watch tonight: David Price and the Rays take on Josh Tomlin and the surprising Indians, Mike Leake returns to the Reds’ rotation to try and pull them out of their funk against Tommy Hanson and the Braves, Tim Lincecum and Shaun Marcum make what might be the night’s best pitching matchup in Milwaukee, and Michael Pineda pitches for the Mariners, which is always worth checking out. Full schedule with probable pitchers here.
