The Symmetry of Cliff Lee's 8 Inning, 13 K shut out over Yankees in ALCS Game 3

I've become interested in the characteristics of line drawings that I create from scorecards of baseball games in the 2010 Post Season. In "The Year of the Pitcher" as they say. In this post I've discovered some new attributes of the Microsoft Paint program that, while less artsy, it is quick and gets across the symmetry of the game perhaps better than the line drawings.

Here's the same graphic with all the extraneous stuff edited out

The Blue boxes are closer Naftali Feliz's 1,2,3 9th inning.

A little harder so see,

1st inning to 3rd: 1,2,3 / 1,2,3 / 1,2,3
3rd inning to 6th: 1,2,3,4 / 1,2,3,4 / 1,2,3,4
7th inning to 9th: 1,2,3 / 1,2,3 / 1,2,3

The graphic simplifies the scorecard down to batters faced and the passing of the innings. Great pitching performances display a symmetry that reflects the efficiency and effectiveness of the pitcher in those games. Lee was coming out to pitch the 9th but the 6 run top of the inning and Lee's 122 pitches thrown, manager Ron Washington changed his mind.

This is Lee's pitch by pitch speed chart, from Brooks Baseball, over the eight innings, notice his last fastball is the highest speed of any pitch all night; and his knuckle curve, the slowest.

This is the separation of the speed of Lee's pitches over the game. Good separation means batters can't time the ball's arrival at the hitting zone. He maintains good separation right to the last series of pitches.

Texas Rangers' pitching Ace, Cliff Lee's pitching line in New York October 18th 2010:

From The Internet Baseball Scorecard

Cliff Lee pitching to New York Yankees in Game 3

From The Internet Baseball Scorecard


I've published four other articles like this one:

• The Symmetry of a Perfect Game (On Roy Halladay's no-hitter)
• The Symmetry of Tim Lincecum's Complete Game 2-hitter
• The Symmetry of Cole Hamels' great start against the Cincinnati Reds
• The Symmetry of Cliff Lee's Complete Game Win over Tampa Bay Rays

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