The Red Sox have, of course, had their fair share of splashy personalities manning the field. Whether it’s David Ortiz recently, or guys like Pedro Martinez or Luis Tiant in the team’s past, the Sox have never had a shortage of players who were as dynamic off the field as they were in Fenway. Occasionally, there comes a player whose personality eclipses their on-field output — and these players can either be a joy or an annoyance, depending on your point of view.
In 1969, one of these players debuted for the BoSox, and by the end of his career with the team, he’d have earned both his share of plaudits and scoffs. Bill Lee came up with the Sox as a relief pitcher in 1969, just a year after being selected in the 1968 MLB Draft. His profile was the very prototype of the “crafty lefty-hander” — his fastball never really lived up to the eponymous description, so he specialized in offspeed pitches including his famous “Leephus” slowball.
His first season with the Sox was a season spent in relief, and really gave no indication that he would later be a fixture in the minds of the Red Sox faithful. In 52 innings as a reliever, Lee posted a pretty average set of numbers by any viewpoint. His traditional numbers didn’t wow anyone, as he posted a 4.50 ERA and 1.62 WHIP. The new-school numbers that better gauge effectiveness didn’t look much better, as cFIP — which measures a pitcher’s true talent over a season — rated Lee at 101, or just slightly worse than league average. Lee’s Deserved Run Average (DRA), which tells you what his runs allowed should have been, ran 5.68, or a full run more than what his ERA was.
1970 was more of the same, just in a smaller sample of 37 innings. In the aggregate, Lee posted similar numbers to his debut season, but the peripherals showed some progress. His ground ball rate spiked up to 66%, and he saw his walk and home run rates fall slightly as well. Then again, it was a notably small sample, and it remains hard to judge anyone on just 37, or even 89, innings.
By 1971, the Spaceman was a fixture in the Boston bullpen, and he spent the next two seasons solidifying his position as an effective relief pitcher. Over the combined 1971 and 1972 seasons, Lee threw 186.3 innings, nearly all in relief. In those seasons, he chopped his Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) and ERA dramatically from his debut seasons, specializing as a ground-ball lefty who could be relied upon to keep his team in the game. His FIP of 3.18 and his ERA under 3.00 were very good, but BP’s WARP value metric (based off of DRA) only had him worth 0.6 wins above replacement player in each of those two seasons.
It was 1973 when things would start to change for Bill Lee, at least on the field. His demeanor off the field stayed the same, but he was finally given the chance to start on a regular basis, stepping into a starting role in May of 1973. Once inducted into the starting rotation, he wouldn’t leave. The junkballer would throw 18 complete games in 284.7 innings, posting what would be the most effective season of his career.
Lee’s 1973 was excellent, and not just because of the large innings load or his 17 wins. For a pitcher who relied so heavily on breaking stuff and guile, rather than raw talent, Lee isn’t at all what sabermetricians might identify as an effective starting pitcher. His strikeout rate was low even for the time, striking out only 3.8 per nine innings, but he was able to limit walks and homers just like he had as a reliever, and he maintained a 61% walk rate. All this allowed Lee to post a shimmering 2.75 ERA, which sat about a run below his DRA of 3.65. The end result was a season in which Lee was worth about four wins above replacement by WARP … and in which he earned his first and only spot in the All-Star Game.
Though that 1973 season would represent the statistical high point of Lee’s career, the next two seasons were hardly chopped liver. From a cursory standpoint, they appeared very similar to Lee’s stellar coming-out party, with the Spaceman logging over 260 innings in each campaign to go with 17 wins per year and ERAs that sat below 4.00. However, as we dig into the peripherals and the underlying numbers, we can see that Lee’s performance wasn’t quite up to the par of that first excellent year as a starter.
In 1974, the Spaceman’s strikeout rate and ground ball rate both dipped slightly, and his true talent level fell as a result. Lee’s cFIP dipped to 115, which pushes him from the “average” bucket of starting pitchers to the cusp of the “bad” bucket. While Lee was always able to outperform his peripherals from an ERA standpoint, he still wasn’t a superstar, posting a DRA of 4.42, which was more indicative of a back-of-the-rotation workhorse rather than the All-Star he once was.
The following season, those strikeout and ground ball numbers dipped gently yet again, but this time his ERA rose to 3.95. This better reflected both his true talent level and his deserved run average, which was an almost identical 3.98. In essence, though the outcomes of Lee’s 1975 season were in some ways worse than the previous year, contextual factors like strength of opposition, ballpark, weather, and other things were part of the conspiracy to raise his ERA. Whereas Lee only mustered 1.1 wins above replacement in ‘74, 1975 was a different story, and he earned a very solid 2.6 wins during an improved season.
Unfortunately, in 1976, Bill Lee had what one might consider the opposite of his breakout All-Star season, proving ineffective as a starter, suffering a mid-season injury, and eventually falling out of the Red Sox rotation entirely. The numbers were bad, and the Spaceman was in freefall. While his cFIP and true talent level looked similar to his previous two seasons, his ERA ballooned to 5.62, and his DRA was slightly worse at 5.76. That combined to cost the Sox about a win and a half in only 96 innings of work, a measure of total and complete inadequacy.
The next two seasons were better than the debacle of 1976, I suppose, but not actually good. Lee flitted back and forth between the rotation and the bullpen, and though time spent in relief should have made his numbers improve, he was only a touch better than his low point over the final two seasons of his Red Sox career. In both 1977 and 1978, Lee posted matching DRAs of 4.68, despite a 4.43 ERA in one year and a 3.46 ERA the next. In essence, he remained a similar pitcher in both seasons, with roughly the same true talent level and deserved results, despite differing outcomes.
You can only call your manager a “gerbil” and walk out on your team due to the trade of a friend only so many times before you wear out your welcome, especially when you’re no more effective than, say, the 2015 version of Rick Porcello.
He’d settled in as a brash, mind-speaking long reliever and swingman, which is fine for most teams, but Lee became a bit of a clubhouse concern, especially during ‘78. You can only call your manager a “gerbil” and walk out on your team due to the trade of a friend only so many times before you wear out your welcome, especially when you’re no more effective than, say, the 2015 version of Rick Porcello.
After that 1978 season, the team traded Lee away for the original Big Papi … Stan Papi. Yup, a utility infielder. I’m not sure even the most unorthodox GM would trade away a consistent — albeit unimpressive — lefty starter for a utility guy with little projection and less hope. But the deal seemed more about ridding the team of a distraction instead of making the team better.
The Spaceman took what we call a “dead cat bounce” in his first season with his new squad, the Montreal Expos. His 1979 season featured 222 innings and 3.04 ERA, but his overall effectiveness wasn’t much different from his career line via DRA. His DRA was more than a win and a half higher, and it would be the last decent season the Spaceman would post. After parts of three more seasons with the Expos, he was released after a walkout mid-1982, never to return to a major league mound.
It’s tough to say who the most Bill Lee-esque player in the modern game is: he’d have to be an iconoclast who’s unafraid to speak his mind despite the consequences. By that metric, perhaps the Mets’ Matt Harvey might be the first guy that comes to mind, but I doubt anyone would compare the fireballing Harvey to the garbage-chucking Lee. No, the best comp in my mind is Angels starter C.J. Wilson, an equally opinionated lefty who also converted from reliever to starter with great early success. Like Lee, Wilson put up a strong series of initial seasons after converting from the ‘pen, but saw his overall effectiveness fizzle after an initial quality run.
In the Boston organization, it’s tough to say if there’s a Spaceman in the offing. The team’s best chance might be Robbie Ross, the recently effective southpaw reliever. Is Robbie Ross likely to turn into an effective, All-Star starter? Heck no! But if he did, and started waxing poetic about the nature of communism, then perhaps we’d have a discussion.
But really, there’s no Spaceman coming, folks. In a baseball world where more players wear an armor of public-relations cliche-speak, it’s rare to find an outspoken, irreverent major-league player … let alone one who could throw out the occasional All-Star season. The Red Sox have been a team full of personality over the century-plus of their existence, but hardly any have captured the public’s imagination the same way Bill Lee did. If only the quality of his play were higher, perhaps the team would have put up with his walkout ways for a bit longer. Instead, the Spaceman fell to earth, burning bright and fading away.
Photo by Greg M. Cooper/USA Today Sports Images
Friend told me Bill Lee was a—ole at Red Sox fantasy camp. Most colorful of all Jimmy Piersall, for us old-timers.