=== July 10, 2010 (8:00 pm) ===

Cliff Lee is proudly rolled out in front of the home faithful.  In his first start with the Rangers, he gives up six earned runs.  The Rangers lose the game badly, 6-1.   Against Baltimore.

Capt. Jack's trade looks completely inexplicable.  For the other side, that is.

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=== July 17, 2010 ===

Cliff Lee starts, and loses, his second game for the Rangers, 3-2 at Fenway.  He's down to a dozen starts remaining, in order to justify the 3,500 AB's the Mariners are going to get from Justin Smoak.

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=== July 27, 2010 ===

Having won his third start, 3-2, against he Angels, Cliff Lee uncorks a 13-strikeout hammering of Oakland.  Visions of postseason glory are now firmly re-implanted in Rangers' fans heads.

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=== August, 2010 ===

Cliff Lee starts seven games for the Rangers, and Texas loses six of these games.

In terms of regular-season $/VORP -- if you're measuring cinnamon in watts -- the Rangers have received precisely nothing for Justin Smoak.

Lee doesn't even pitch all that well theoretically -- he does not put up the peripheral lines that have sabertistas arguing that "given fair dice rolls, he would have ...."

No, Lee goes 4-6, 3.98 for the Rangers in the regular season.  He had a great K:BB, as always, but at the cost of lots of homers:  In August, he yielded a .479 SLG.

Had the Mariners given up, say, Dustin Ackley for 15 starts of Roy Halladay and gotten [4-6, 3.98 +Walks On Down the Road] for it, we have little doubt that the Ackley WAR Scoreboard would have been on the Seattle cyber-marquee for quite some time...

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=== October 5, 2010 ===

Texas had played three (3) short playoff series in its 50-year history:

• 1999:  Lost in a sweep, 3-0
• 1998:  Lost in a sweep, 3-0
• 1996:  Lost in four games, 3-0

And in their fourth short series, they were going up against a 96-win Rays team that had a run differential of 802-649.

Had the Rangers not had Cliff Lee on their team, they would have, again, lost this series in either three or four games.

...............

The sabermetrician tends to assume that ... hey.  Even if you did care about the cinnamon-wattage of playoff victory?  Whatever.  Playoff wins are purely luck, anyway.

Such sabermetricians must have been to very few playoff games involving great pitchers.  :- )

...............

The Red Sox tend to think of playoff victory not as being 100% luck, but as being 40% luck, 40% superiority of talent, and 20% roster composition (Stars & Scrubs -- 5 pitchers are used much more).

There's no harm in being aware of playoff luck.  But the sabermetrician who wants to lay down and die, before the playoffs ever start, because resistance (to Luck) is futile ... that sabermetrician has never had Cliff Lee on his ballclub.

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Part 3

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