2010: The year of Roy, Lee and crazy endings

Note: For all intents, this will be the last installment for 2010 and as such we here at The Food would like to extend hearty December wishes to all our supporters, friends, colleagues and even the haters. All of these folks made 2010 a pretty interesting year and we’re hoping 2011 can be just as good. So for now, see you soon and be ready for some cool things to come, including the reemergence of The Podcast of Awesomeness in early January.

I don’t like end of the year lists. In fact, I loathe them. Yeah… loathe. It’s not a normal thing for people to dislike, especially one in the business of recounting things that already happened. Weird, right?

Maybe it’s something about the passage of time that gets some people like me down. Another year slips by, another year older, another missed chance. Or perhaps the veritable annual list is the refuge of the hack, kind of like the post-game or post-season report cards? List and report cards? Lame.

Thing is, I enjoy reading a list from time to time. When done well or uniquely, they can be fascinating. Chances are this won’t be one of them, but alas, I’m saving my ideas for something else.

So, without any more blathering on, here are some lists of a pretty remarkable year that is all but gone.

Best big-time performance nearly everyone forgot about

Roy Halladay vs. San Francisco in Game 5 of NLCS

Undoubtedly, 2010 was a pretty big year for Roy Halladay. In fact, Halladay also should be the top of a list for both elbowing a big event out of the way (perfect game in Miami on the same day as Game 1 of the Flyers in the Stanley Cup Finals), while also being shoved out of the limelight (Donovan McNabb was traded to Washington the night before his debut with the Phillies in Washington). The fact is Halladay did everything for the Phillies except for a World Series victory, but we have to figure that the addition of Cliff Lee to the pitching rotation should remedy that.

It wasn’t as if Halladay had too many doubters in 2010, though a few warnings were issued, like my favorite delivered before the Halladay’s postseason debut: “Hey, he’s going to learn that the playoffs are much different than the regular season…”

Yeah, they’re easier. Halladay made his playoff debut with his second no-hitter of the season and just the second ever in postseason history.

But sometimes it really isn’t easy at all. For instance, Halladay did not have an easy time in the do-or-die Game 5 in San Francisco against Giants’ ace Tim Lincecum. Halladay suffered a groin injury during the second inning of the game—one that would have ended his night during the regular season—but persevered long enough to pitch the Phillies to victory. The injury came while attempting to put a little something extra on a pitch to Cody Ross, and hurt so badly that Halladay says he spent the time between innings jogging and riding a stationary bike so the groin would not further tighten and cramp.

So Halladay would pitch an inning then workout until it was time to pitch again. The catch-22 was that the legs are vital to a pitcher like Halladay, so not only was he keeping the cramps at bay, but also was tiring other muscles needed to pitch.

Instead, he labored through six innings, didn’t have the greatest command or velocity, yet still held the Giants to just two runs to beat Lincecum and save the season.

Afterwards, many players on the team said Halladay’s performance was more impressive than the no-hitter and perfect game.

“That’s what I’m thinking,” said Brad Lidge, who got the save in the game. “It’s not going to go down that way. But the guy was pitching on one wheel and he gave us six innings and left with the lead in a game we had to win or else. People won’t realize how great this was because there’s no statistic for it, but we, the guys in this clubhouse, do.”

Equally impressive was how Halladay shrugged it off after the game and even threw his hat into the ring as a possible reliever for a potential Game 7.

“I was going to try to find a way,” Halladay said. “I just hoped that way was going to be good enough and fortunately it was.”

Unfortunately there is no statistic or formula to measure what Halladay meant to the Phillies in that game.

Heroic performance that ended badly

Roy Oswalt in relief vs. San Francisco in Game 4 of NLCS

Who doesn’t love feats of strength? Who doesn’t get excited by extraordinary occurrences? In those regards, a pitcher working on short rest is always a time to sit up and take notice.

First of all, something had to happen to put a team in the position to use a pitcher without proper rest. Usually that thing isn’t good, and in this instance starter Roy Oswalt saw the way the pivotal Game 4 was unfolding and figured he had to do something. When he looked down the right-field line and saw Kyle Kendrick throwing warm-up pitches next to lefty Antonio Bastardo and Ryan Madson so quickly after Chad Durbin gave up the lead on the third hitter he faced, Oswalt probably didn’t feel too confident. Chances are Oswalt might have panicked when he saw Charlie Manuel’s options.

So when Madson went out to the mound to start his second inning of work in the eighth, Oswalt approached pitching coach Rich Dubee with a proposition…

Give me the ball.

Imagine what a legend Oswalt would have become if he would have survived the ninth, figured out a way to win the game, and then rode Halladay’s performance in Game 5 to a 3-2 advantage going back to Philadelphia. Backed by a masterful three-hitter over eight innings just two days prior, Oswalt could have been the catalyst to get the Phillies back into the World Series.

Instead, he was merely a footnote and a mark in the box score that indicates that he got two outs in the ninth inning of a loss. Oh, but it was nearly so much more.

Most disappointing way to end a season

Ryan Howard watching strike three go past with tying and winning runs on base

Yeah, it was the one moment that perfectly defined the Phillies in hitters in 2010. Though Ryan Howard batted a team best .318 in the NLCS, he struck out a record-breaking 12 times. Instead of a big hit like in the 2009 NLDS against Colorado in a similar situation, Howard watched the season end with the umpire waving his right hand in the air.

Oh, but every dark cloud has a silver lining. Knowing that the rapidly aging Phillies’ hitters are streaky and riddled with question marks, general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. thought it was necessary to go out and get Cliff Lee.

Way to go, big fella.

Honorable mention

Patrick Kane’s goal in overtime of Game 6 that Michael Leighton still hasn’t seen or fished out of the net was particularly maddening, but not for the reasons one would think.

Though it ended the Flyers’ chances to win the Stanley Cup for the first time in 35 years, and ruined an improbable comeback thanks to Scott Hartnell’s goal with 3:59 remaining in regulation, this one was especially sloppy because the Blackhawks had to wait for a review before they could properly celebrate. We knew it was a goal, but we had to wait…

And then Jeremy Roenick cried.

Best one-day performance in Philadelphia

Usain Bolt at the Penn Relays

Actually, this one could go down for the best performance nobody paid much attention to except for the 50,000 people packed into Franklin Field.

Certainly there many candidates for this one, like Roy Halladay and his no-hitters or Michael Vick’s recent spate of awesomeness, but when the fastest man ever to set foot on the planet comes to town and then runs faster than anyone has ever seen before… well, that’s beyond cool.

Usain Bolt, of course, is the 23-year-old Jamaican who destroyed the world records in the 100- and 200-meters at the Olympics in 2008 and the World Championships in 2009 in a manner that transcended mere athletics. In fact, Bolt’s electrifying efforts at those competitions motivated a even a few of the most jaded and experienced sports writers to describe the events as the most exciting and exhilarating they had ever seen.

Moreover, crusty old veteran track coaches have gone so far as to compare Bolt’s talent along the lines of those possessed by Einstein, Beethoven and Newton. Certainly those aren’t the usual names one hears an elite-level athlete compared to.

Still, the largest crowd in the 116-year history of the Penn Relays came to see one guy, and he competed for just 8.79 seconds in his anchor leg effort. Actually, Bolt’s personality and talent is so large in the sport, that Olympic gold medalists and champions of the sport lingered around the track just to catch a glimpse.

And then he did his “Lightning” pose.

“I was leadoff leg and I could actually hear, right next to me, the crowd screaming. I’ve been coming here for about 12 years now, and this was the loudest one. It was great,” said two-time world champion, Lisa Barber, who helped Team USA win the women’s 4x100-meters. “When Bolt was warming up, I couldn't hear my music anymore through my headphones. It's great that Usain is getting this much press. He’s getting so much recognition worldwide.”

Playing a team sport is one thing, but watching a guy run as fast as Bolt is stunning.

Actually, just seeing Bolt run might be the coolest and surreal thing in all of sports. Standing yards away from the finishing line on Saturday, Bolt moves past as if he were a runaway motorcycle and the breeze from his nearly 30-mph wake was enough to cool the crowd on a sun-soaked afternoon.

“I told the guys to make sure I didn't have to work, because I really didn't want to do much,” Bolt said. “I got the baton, so I wasn’t really worried about anything else.”

Worried? What could the fastest man in the history of the earth ever have to worry about?

Best example of being careful or someone will lose an eye

Ian Laperriere blocked shot vs. New Jersey in Game 5 of NHL playoffs

Interestingly, one of the best ways to remove blood from an article of clothing or fabric is with an ice cube. According to one of those helpful hints web sites, the ice will melt through the fabric and take the blood with it. However, blood stains on the ice require a little more elbow grease to come out. The trail of blood left behind by Ian Laperriere on his way to the Flyers’ dressing room took a stoppage of the game, the ice crew to skate out with tools to chip it away and then about 60 or 70 stitches to close up the cut right above his eye.

Who knew a piece of vulcanized rubber traveling approximately 100-mph could cause so much damage to a man’s face? Moreover, who knew a man would be so crazy enough to put his face in the way of something traveling so fast all because he felt it would be beneficial to his teammates?

Better yet, as soon as Laperriere realized he had not left his eye out on the ice and just needed a few dozen stitches, he boasted he would do the same thing over again if the situation arose.

“He would have been back on the bench if they could have gotten him stitched up in time,” Flyers coach Peter Laviolette said.

The best part about Laperriere stopping a puck with his eye to help the Flyers eliminate the Devils in the first round of the playoffs wasn’t all that blood. That was quite disturbing. No, what was cool was that Laperriere took his time to answer question from the press—even offering to “go outside” and fight with a writer—so soon after blood poured out of his face as if being released from a squeezie bottle.

“I do what I do and I don’t think twice about doing it,” Laperriere said. “The next game, if I get a chance to block a shot I’ll go down, because that’s what I do. The day I stop doing that, I’ll retire. Call me dumb, call me stupid, whatever. I block shots.”

He’s not lying. Earlier in the season, Laperriere took a puck to the face that opened up his mouth as if it were a piñata. In that case he needed more than 100 stitches to close the wound, and since it occurred early enough in the game, Laperriere was back on the ice by the third period.

Yes, he blocks shots.

Best game we will still be talking about next year

Eagles 38, Giants 31

Michael Vick, Desean Jackson and 28 points in eight minutes. Was it real or was it Tecmo Bowl?

The fact is the Eagles’ crazy comeback at the Meadowlands last Sunday was the best ending to a regular-season football game most of us will see. However, I must admit I am saddened that the Sept. 17, 1989 game in which the Eagles scored 21 in the final quarter to overcome a 20-point deficit at RFK Stadium.

Remember that one? That’s when Randall Cunningham threw for 447 yards with five TD passes and 12 catches for Keith Jackson. Jerome Brown, Reggie White, Wes Hopkins and the rest of the Gang Green defense was at its chaotic best even though Redskins’ running back Gerald Riggs ran for 221 yards.

Make that 221 yards offset by four fumbles and two interceptions by the greatest Philadelphia team to never win a championship.

Incidentally, the week after the comeback in Washington, the Eagles lost to the 49ers at the Vet when Joe Montana threw four TD passes in the fourth quarter. Ultimately, the Redskins got revenge when they beat the Eagles in a playoff game in Philly. The next day, Buddy Ryan was “fired for winning.”

Best trade

Donovan McNabb to Washington for draft picks in 2010 and 2011

The trade that brought Roy Halladay to Philly was pretty good. So too was the trade for Roy Oswalt, who turned out to be the Phillies’ best pitcher in August and September.

However, has there ever been a more impactful “addition by subtraction” deal than the McNabb trade? McNabb has been sent to the bench in Washington while his replacement, Michael Vick, looks to be the MVP of the NFL. How did that happen?

It’s funny to look back to last April when it all went down. Looking back on what was said the afternoon of the introductory press conference at Redskin Park in Ashburn, Va., the seasons for both teams turned out to be the exact opposite as predicted.

McNabb said he knew his days with the Eagles were numbered when Brian Dawkins was allowed to leave. Even though Andy Reid told anyone who would listen that he saw McNabb quarterbacking his team for the foreseeable future, McNabb knew otherwise. Reid was creating an oil slick on the surface to try and create a diversion of sorts.
 
“We knew it was going on from the beginning,” McNabb said about the trade talks by the Eagles.

“For you not to bring Brian Dawkins back, that (says) we're all replaceable," McNabb said. “I'm a part of it this year. They’re rebuilding, and they're going young. I never knew 33 was old, but I guess I'm old.” 

The Eagles rebuilding? At 10-4, they sure have a funny way of doing it.
 
Better yet, McNabb was telling us how much better it was going to be now that he was finally out of Philly.
 
“You guys from Philly don’t know much about the running game,” he said with one of those grins that makes it seem like a joke, but it’s really a dig. “We will run the ball here.”
 
Yeah, how did that work out?

The best parts were when McNabb copped the Mark McGwire act and said he didn’t want to talk about the past. Football is a team game with 11 men on each side and one man didn’t make a huge difference, McNabb said. But in the next breath he told us how great the Eagles became when they smartly took him with the No. 2 pick in the 1999 draft.
 
“I came to a team that was 3-13 and we went 5-11 (his rookie year) and then average nine of 10 wins a year and made it to five NFC Championship Games and a Super Bowl, and not many teams can say that,” McNabb said. “Yes, we didn't win it, but it was a good ride. Every time the Eagles stepped on the field, everybody felt confident we could win that one, and I want to bring that here.” 
 
Or, more succinctly: you’re welcome, Eagles. It was me that made you guys look better.

He was never more right about that than this year. Funny how things play out.

Things that happened that we saw

• Gilbert Arenas fired his six-shooters for the last time of the 2009-10 season in Philadelphia last January. Before the game, Sixers’ coach Eddie Jordan actually said: "The impression I have him is he’s a heckuva three-point shooter, he drives to the basket and he hurt us a lot down there the last time we played them, and he’s an assassin on the floor—he’s a really good player and that’s what we have to prepare for," Jordan said.

  As he walked away, Jordan thought for a quick second and said to no one in particular.

  “I probably should have used another word than 'assassin.'”

• In February they had the Wing Bowl again for some reason. Snooki showed up and people had mass quantities of food.

• The beginning of March saw the end of the winter Olympics, highlighted by the gold-medal hockey game where Canada beat the U.S. Also during March, it was suggested that the Phillies were going to trade Ryan Howard to the Cardinals for Albert Pujols.

• Philadelphia jumped into Major League Soccer when the Philadelphia Union made their debut in April.

• In May, the Phillies could not score a run, a kid got tasered and Mike Meech went on a hunger strike. Floyd Landis also came clean about his past in professional cycling and outed Lance Armstrong as a PED user. This one is sure to heat up big time in 2011. Sadly, the great Robin Roberts died at age 83.

• Tiger Woods brought his golf tournament, as well as some of the best golfers in the world, to Aronimink in Newtown Square. The World Cup mesmerized everyone, and Stephen Strasburg made an incredible big league debut in Washington.

• Dom Brown made it to the Majors in July and hit a double in his first at-bat. The Phillies traded for Roy Oswalt and notorious Yankees’ owner George Steinbrenner died.

• In August, Stephen Strasburg pitched his last game in Philadelphia before heading off to Tommy John surgery.

• Brad Lidge capped off a strong season in September, while the Phillies clinched their fourth straight division title and finished the season with the best record in baseball for the first time.

• In October, Jayson Werth played his last game for the Phillies, Roy Halladay threw another no-hitter, Cliff Lee dominated for a little while, and the Giants got to the World Series.

• November saw what is likely to be the end of Jamie Moyer’s career, the beginning of the destruction of the Spectrum and Halladay won the Cy Young Award. Meanwhile, the Giants won the World Series even though Pat Burrell was horrible, and baseball great Sparky Anderson died.

• December? We’ll let you figure that one out.

Werth is determined, not bitter

WASHINGTON — Let’s not get it twisted, Jayson Werth is not bitter. Who gets bitter about signing a $126 million, no-trade contract? In this economy and with the unemployment rate near 10 percent, Werth can work for seven more years before cashing out. In fact, with the right money manager, Werth’s young children can retire, too.

Bitter? C’mon… he’s not stupid. Early on during the 2010 season Werth told us he was going to test the free-agent market and go for the best deal out there and that’s exactly what he did. Werth wanted to get paid like his former teammates Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Roy Halladay and the rest of the players on the Phillies who were taken care of by management. Instead, he had to go somewhere else for that big contract.

The Phillies reportedly had just a three-year deal worth $16 million per season for him when Werth hit the open market.

Nevertheless, Werth is also a pretty competitive dude. No one gets to the big leagues and slugs 13 postseason home runs by accident or by tricking people. Moreover, not many ballplayers accomplish what Werth has so soon after his career was nearly over.

So if you want to know what this is all about, it’s the injury. It’s the sitting at home during the 2006 season with nobody knocking at the door or ringing the phone. It’s about the misdiagnosis of a wrist injury that forced Werth out of desperation to trudge up to Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic with one last chance to save his career. A person can almost hear music in Werth’s voice when he describes how specialist Dr. Richard Berger figured out the injury was a ulnotriquetral ligament split.

He hasn’t been the same since.

Yes, that’s why Werth took the seven years from lowly Washington instead of the three from Philadelphia.

“A lot of blood, sweat and tears went into this,” Werth said. “Obviously the years were important to me. The chance to come to a city, guaranteed to be here for a long time, the no-trade was a big deal for me. I have a chance to set my family up for years to come here.”

It’s hard to fault a guy for thinking like that. However, Werth is not without his pride. Baseball is his job for goshsakes. Sure it’s fun and a remarkable way to make an obscene amount of money, but Werth isn’t messing around out there. He wants to perform well, win games and celebrate at the end of the season. Looking for examples? OK, how about when he hit that home run against the Yankees in the World Series at the Bank, slammed his bat down and yelled into the Phillies’ dugout?

Or what about Game 4 of the 2008 World Series when Werth hit a homer in the eighth inning and circled the bases with a fist in the air. He looked as if he could feel the championship ring being placed on his finger right then. Of course there was that incident with the kid and his father in right field last year, too… didn’t they know Werth thought he could stretch into the stands beyond his reach to catch a foul ball? Didn’t they know ballplayers use those types of words when things don’t go their way?

If anything, the pride aspect of Werth’s personality is what makes the move to Washington puzzling even when factoring in the $126 million. That’s especially so when listening to him speak on Wednesday afternoon at his new ballpark.

“I’ve been in the postseason a lot the last couple of years,” he said. “That’s what it’s all about. That’s what you play for. That’s what you work out for. That's what you get to spring training early for. I hate to lose. I’m here to win.”

That task didn’t seem so daunting when Werth first signed the deal. After all, the Phillies were basically the same team that fell short in 2010 minus their everyday right fielder. Then the Cliff Lee thing happened and everything changed.

“They got their boy back, I guess,” Werth said. 

Yes they did and it wasn’t Jayson Werth. Instead he was allowed to run off much like Aaron Rowand, a player who signed with San Francisco for a lot of years and a lot of dollars because the view from management was that his stats were enhanced by Citizens Bank Park and the Phillies’ lineup. Maybe that’s where the twinge of bitterness might come in for Werth.

No, he wasn’t double-crossed, but he wasn’t really needed, either.

That’s not the case in Washington, though. Instead, GM Mike Rizzo submitted on nearly every point to Werth and his agent Scott Boras. From the Nats, Werth got big money, a huge length of the contract and a no-trade clause on top of it all with promises of more players to come. Actually, the undercurrent from the Nats’ view was that Werth was the first one onboard and the one who gives them credibility with other potential ballplayers.

That’s the sense “No Discounts” Boras gets, too.

“When Jayson signed, the first thing (players) all asked me was, ‘Oh, so Washington's stepping up? They’re taking those steps? They’re looking to win now?’” Boras said. “In the player community, when you gain that kind of street credit, you have taken a huge step as far as what players will look at your organization, and how they’ll look at it differently.”

It’s not going to happen overnight, though, but Werth hammered home the theme that promises were made.

“The thing about this team is, I think there's some pieces of the puzzle that could be put together and make this team a winner,” Werth said. “I was assured by the Lerner family and Mike Rizzo that they’re going to take steps needed to go get those players and fill the roster accordingly—not with just anybody, but the right-talented guy and the right mix, the person that will make the clubhouse a good place. That was important to me, and that was one of the things that led me to sign here.”

No, that doesn’t sound like a bitter guy at all. Actually, it sounds like a guy with a lot of pride and a hunger to lift the Nats to the top of the standings.

“He doesn’t like losing. I certainly don’t like losing,” Rizzo said. “My job is to put a winner on the field, and we’re hell-bent on doing that.”

It’s not going to be easy, though. After all, Jayson Werth can’t pitch.

Does Cliff Lee make the Phillies one of the best teams ever?

There was a stretch last September where the Phillies went on a run to cripple the rest of the NL East, winning 11 games in a row and 22 of 26 in which the team showed glimpses of something otherworldly. It was thanks to that streak that the Phillies erased a seven-game deficit in the standings and turned it into a seven-game advantage faster than one could say, “The Big Three.”

Led by the starting rotation made up of aces Roy Halladay, Cole Hamels and Roy Oswalt, most of the players in the clubhouse were playing for the best team ever. At least that’s what they said.

“Definitely. We’re better all around – less question marks. Not that question marks ever bothered us because we like to prove skeptics wrong, but coming into this year there were only one or two things people were iffy about,” said Jimmy Rollins, the longest tenured player on the team. “Then we had a great acquisition in little Roy [Oswalt] and that took the pressure off of Cole [Hamels], and then Roy [Halladay] took the pressure off of everybody. He just came in and shut the door. Lights out.”

Still, it’s tough to label the team the best ever if it didn’t win the championship, and despite a postseason where the pitching staff posted a 2.37 ERA, got 80 strikeouts in 79 2/3 innings and had two shutouts, a near shutout, and a no-hitter, the ending was quite disappointing.

So rather than keep Jayson Werth on an offense that was frustratingly maddening during the season and playoffs, general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. did the next logical move and backed up a Brinks’ truck on Cliff Lee’s front lawn. Apparently the Phillies plan for 2011 is if they aren’t going to score many runs, then the other team isn’t going to score any...

At all.

And that’s just it, isn’t it? The Phillies intend on flirting with history in 2011 and to do so they have replaced Cy Young Award winners Cliff Lee and Pedro Martinez with Oswalt and Lee (again). In fact, the motto for the Phillies hitters in the coming season might be, “One and done.” After all, on most nights they probably can get by with just one run.

But is this the best pitching staff in team history, let alone recent baseball history? Baring an injury there is a chance the quartet could become just the third group in baseball history to have four 20-game winners on the same staff. Only the 1971 Orioles with Dave McNally (21-5), Pat Dobson (20-8), Jim Palmer (20-9) and Mike Cuellar (20-9) as well as the 1920 White Sox with Red Faber (23-13), Lefty Williams (22-14), Dickie Kerr (21-9) and Ed Ciciotte (21-10) have accomplished the feat.

However, neither team won the World Series.

So yes, for history to judge the Phillies most favorably, they have to win.

After all, does anyone remember much about the Oakland teams that went to the postseason in four straight seasons but never made it past the ALDS? How about the Indians of the 1990s that made it the playoffs for five seasons in a row and the World Series twice, but never wore the ring?

Of course there are also the Braves that dominated divisional play for 14 years in a row, but have just one title—against the Indians in ’95—to show for it.

Going back a bit, the Orioles made it to the World Series three years in a row (1969, 1970, 1971), but won it once. The same thing happened with Oakland in 1988, 1989 and 1990. Those teams are remembered as dynasties that might have been had it been able to finish the deal.

Are the Phillies worried about how history might judge them?

“You play this game to try and win championships and that’s our focus,” Ryan Howard said toward the end of the 2010 season. “We stay focused on the task at hand and let you guys tell us where it fits into the history books. That will sort itself out.”

The collating process might be a little simpler with Lee and maybe the “wow” factor engulfing the baseball world will lend itself to a few victories. Still, has Amaro assembled the best foursome ever? Just how does this group compare with the Braves of 1998 where five pitchers (Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz, Millwood and Neagle) won at least 17 games? What about the 1966 Dodgers with Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Don Sutton and Claude Osteen that posted a 2.68 ERA in 1,062 innings averaging 7.1 strikeouts per nine innings? The ’66 Dodgers had three Hall of Famers while the ’98 Braves have three pitchers that should be in as soon as they are eligible.

Then there was the 1954 Indians with its trio of Hall of Famers in Early Wynn, Mike Garcia, Bob Lemon and Bob Feller that compiled 77 complete games and 12 shutouts on the way to 111 wins… do the 2011 Phillies fit in with those great teams?

Maybe, but the Phillies hope not. Why… because none of those teams won the World Series. In fact, the Indians and Dodgers got swept and the Braves never got there. Of course there is the alternative, too, which is a flat-out flop. The teams that come to mind in the flop category are the 2007 and 2008 Mets who went out and got Johan Santana to lead a rotation comprised of Glavine, Pedro, Oliver Perez and John Maine only to collapse, titanically, before reaching the finish line.

Also, there are many Yankees teams that tried to buy a championship with pitching only to fall flat, which is the risk the Phillies are faced with now. With two of the highest paid pitchers in baseball history followed by two past NLCS MVPs, one of whom is heading into his free agent year, the Phillies have plenty of pressure piling up this season.

And then, of course, there is history to tend with, too.

Why was Cliff Lee traded in the first place?

There was a casual moment before a game in New York last season where general manager Ruben Amaro Jr., while shooting the breeze with a few writers, mused on last December’s trade that sent Cliff Lee to the Seattle Mariners for a gaggle of supposed prospects.

“According to some people,” Amaro said jokingly, “it was the dumbest trade ever.”

The response to that was, “Well, not the dumbest.”

Sure, it was a light moment and everyone had a good chuckle, but it underscored the one theme of the 2010 season that never went away…

Just how could anyone trade Cliff Lee?

Certainly there was plenty of grumbling about the media and the fans fascination with Lee after he was dealt away only to resurface in Texas where he led the Rangers to the World Series for the first time in club history. Shoot, even while reveling in the glory of Roy Halladay’s no-hitter in the playoffs, senior advisor Dallas Green said the moment gave the Phils’ brass a chance to "go wild."

“We forgot about Cliff Lee,” Green said.

That didn’t last too long, though. Lee didn’t let anyone forget about him by tearing through the first two rounds of the playoffs with performances that topped even the greatness he put together with the Phillies in 2009. In his first 24 innings, Lee racked up 34 strikeouts and allowed just two runs. He made it very hard on Phillies fans even though no one was unhappy about their team. How could anyone be upset about replacing Lee with Halladay and Roy Oswalt?

Still, there was something about Lee. He was as cool pitching for the Rangers as he was in 2009. Unflappable might be the best word because he never, ever changed his approach or his routine. He still ran on and off the field, still pantomimed a throw into center field from behind the mound before he began to warm up before an inning, and still threw that low 90s-mph fastball.

How cool was Lee? While most pitchers cocooned their arms in ice after games, Lee showered, dressed and was gone. He didn’t treat his arm with ice like most pitchers. Even after a career-high 272 innings pitched (counting the playoffs) in ‘09, Lee never strapped his arm in an ice pack after a game. In 16 of his 39 starts Lee pitched into the eighth inning. He averaged 104 pitches per start and hardly walked anyone.

And then he got even better. Better yet, Lee got so good that the New York Yankees and the millions they offered at him wasn’t enough. Apparently Lee wants to win, too, and there was no other place he wanted to do it than Philadelphia.

What in the name of Scott Rolen is going on here?

Strangely, the Phillies now have Halladay and Lee. They have Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels, too, while the comparisons to the Braves of the 1990s and Orioles of the early 1970s roll in. Actually, the talk is that the rotation that Amaro somehow put together could be the greatest ever, and that’s not just in Philadelphia where Connie Mack put together some strong teams in the first half of the last century. Instead people are talking about the top four starters as the greatest ever in baseball. Of course they have to win it first—win it all, not just get there—but the resume is nothing to sneeze at.

Amongst the Fab Four, there are three Cy Young Awards, two MVPs in the NLCS, one in the World Series, six 20-win seasons and 13 All-Star Game appearances. Already we’re talking about whether the Phillies can have three 20-game winners on the staff, a feat not pulled off in the big leagues since Oakland did it in 1973 with Ken Holtzman, Vida Blue and Catfish Hunter. Meanwhile, a team has had four 20-game winners on a team just twice in history (1920 White Sox, 1971 Orioles).

Incidentally, the Phillies were the first team to have three 20-game winners on the same team when the second-place 1901 club did it, but then again that they carried just six pitchers all season.

Nevertheless, the Lee deal begs the question as to why he even had to be traded at all. Was the 363 days spent in the American League really necessary or was it something that needed to happen in order for everyone to understand just how valuable pitching is? More importantly, with Oswalt headed into the final year of his current deal, is the fearsome foursome just a one-year rocket ship headed for October or will Amaro be able to find the cash to keep it together?

Don’t tell us that they will have to trade Oswalt only to bring him back after a season in the wilderness.

Whatever happens, 2011 is going to be pressure-packed and fun to watch. Halladay, Lee, Oswalt and Hamels have to win it, don’t they? Anything short of another WFC has to be considered a failure, right?

Is this what it feels like for Yankees and Red Sox fans, too?

Anyway, there was a valuable lesson learned since last Dec. 16 when Lee was sent packing and it is, give up on Lee at your peril. The Yankees couldn’t swing a deal for him at the deadline last July and paid for it during the regular-season and the playoffs. Tampa Bay could have used Lee, too, but in the end he beat them twice in the postseason. Halladay and Oswalt were spectacular during the second half of the season, but if Amaro thought for a second that the offense would be outdone by the Giants’ in the NLCS, do you think he would have given up on Cliff Lee?

They Giants won the World Series with a rookie, Pat Burrell and Aubrey Huff in the middle of their batting order and that just ain’t right.

Maybe the better question is just what was it about Lee that keeps folks in Philly talking? After all, Lee arrived at the end of July in 2009 and was gone by the second week of December. That’s not a long time at all and yet it’s a wonder an impromptu parade down Broad Street didn’t break out when news of his reacquisition hit like wild fire.

Yes, Lee is back only this time it has to be better than before.

He's back...

Is it personal or is it business?

It’s pretty tough to bounce around the Internets without stumbling onto a picture of Derek Jeter, shirtless and hanging out with his fiance, Minka Kelly. That’s just the way it goes when the free-agent market is as tissue-thin as it is this winter, but moreover, that’s the way it is when it’s Derek Jeter.

Jeter, the captain, shortstop, glamour boy and link to the Yankees’ ghosts, has been the hot stove story thus far, mostly because the negotiations with the club haven’t gone all that well. At least that’s the portrait painted by the hyperbolic New York press, where the reports claim there is an $80 million and two-year gulf between the player and his team.

Actually, the consensus is the Yankees are daring to go to another team as if Jeter’s act only works in New York City. You know, because popular players who bat at least .291 in 15 straight seasons heading into 2010 with five World Series rings while just 74 hits shy of the magical 3,000 hit mark have difficulty adapting.

But this isn’t about history, loyalty or legacies. This is 2010 and even though Jeter might be the modern version of Joe DiMaggio, it’s the money that matters.

No, it’s not personal. It’s business.

It’s really a ridiculous phrase if you stop and think about it. Actually, it’s one of those idioms that is an established part of our lexicon that results in solemn nods or resigned shoulder shrugs whenever someone lays it out there.

Well, it’s just business.

What in the name of Gordon Gecko does that mean?

Apparently, it means Jeter and the Yankees are trying to save face. It means if the world is a rat race then it’s OK to be a rat. It means Tessio is going to have to go for a ride with Tom Hagen and he’s not going to be able to talk his way out of it. Not this time.

Tell Mikey it’s just business, it’s not personal.

That’s exactly what this standoff is all about. Jeter doesn’t want to take a cut in the 10-year, $189 million deal he just completed and the Yankees want to stop being the Yankees to guys like Derek Jeter. Instead, the Yankees want to be the Yankees to Cliff Lee and make a deal with the lefty that will make Jeter’s look like tip money. Certainly the three-year, $45 million the Yankees reportedly offered Jeter will look like loose change found in the cushions of the couch compared to what Lee is expected to command.

So what we have here is a situation where one side has to determine the worth of its counterpart. Certainly Jeter is one of the most popular players in the game, and even though he just wrapped up his worst season where he established career lows in batting (.270) and slugging (.370), those within the game rate him as one of the top handful of players. However, at 36, Jeter’s age and defense is an issue. Plus, the Yankees have already paid Jeter more than $205 million in salary where as the Yankees’ captain and shortstop, he is one of the few baseball players with an elite-level Q-rating.

Jeter wants four to five years. These days, the length of a contract is the deal-breaker for most ballplayers, simply because unlike in the NFL, MLB deals are guaranteed. Look at Jayson Werth and the Phillies—in that situation, a deal likely could be brokered for three years, but Werth wants more, and he’ll probably get it. No, Jeter probably doesn’t need the money a guaranteed deal ensures, but if he’s healthy he’s going to get a chance to play with a five-year deal.

Five more seasons could put Jeter on the cusp of 4,000 hits, a milestone reached by only two hitters in Major League Baseball history. In fact, Pete Rose, the all-time hit leader, was exactly 10 hits behind Jeter at similar points in their careers. Rose had just turned 37 when he collected his 3,000^th hit in his 16^th season. Jeter will likely get his 3,000^th career hit around his 37^th birthday in his 16^th season, too.

Interestingly, I met with Rose in Las Vegas a couple of years ago and asked him if he thought anyone could break his record of 4,256 hits. The answer, of course, was a blunt and resounding, “No.”

But I pressed on anyway, ticking off names as if we were a couple of baseball fans talking about the game in a bar or wherever. Only in this case it was Rose, me and the workers at a memorabilia shop in Caesar’s Palace where the all-time hit king was signing autographs and posing for pictures.

“Alex Rodriguez?”

“No.”

Even though A-Rod averages 190 hits per 162 games, his tendency to hit homers and standing in the middle of the Yankees’ offense might make it difficult for him to get beyond 3,800 hits.

“Ichiro?”

“If he would have started out playing in the U.S., maybe. But he lost all those years.”

Yes, that’s true. Ichiro would have the best chance if he hadn’t spent the first half of his career playing in Japan. He is 36 and has nearly 3,500 hits between both Japan and the U.S. and needs just 16 more hits this season to break Rose’s record of 10 seasons with at least 200 hits.

Regardless, Ichiro’s nine “lost” seasons in Japan cost him.

However, the way Rose so quickly dismissed the next name was kind of surprising.

“Derek Jeter,” I said.

“No,” said Pete.

“Really? Why not? He gets 200-hits a season and hits at the top of a lineup that needs his to get hits. Ten years worth of 200 hits or close to it is nearly 2,000 hits. That adds up.”

“Yeah, but he’s 35,” Pete said.

What Rose didn’t mention was that when he was 40, he led the National League in hits. He also played first base in his first four seasons with the Phillies, a far less demanding position than shortstop, and got 705 hits from ages 38 to 41. That comes to an average of 193 hits per 162 games.

Not bad for an old guy.

In another coincidence, Rose was just a year older than Jeter when he left Cincinnati for Philadelphia and the Phillies and WPHL (Channel 17), ponied up a record $3.225 million over four years (with an option for the fifth year) to give the old man. Times were different, of course. With Rose, the Phillies sold more tickets and Channel charged more for ads. Philadelphia also got to see Rose pass Stan Musial for the hit record in the National League. Better yet, the Phillies won the World Series in 1980 made it back there in ’83 and made the playoffs in 1981.

In other words, the Phillies needed Pete Rose.

Do the Yankees need Derek Jeter? Will Jeter help the Yankees sell more tickets or attract more advertisers to their TV network? Probably not. But will he pass some meaningful milestones at Yankee Stadium and help the team get to the playoffs where the cash really rolls in. Additionally, will signing Jeter prevent the Yankees from going after players like Cliff Lee?

Jeter’s value is found in the answer to those questions.

Why can't we quit Cliff Lee?

It was a preposterous idea. Know how they say truth is stranger than fiction? Yeah, well this one was just too strange for even that. In the most sordid and obscene of tawdry ideas, just the thought of it should make one’s skin crawl and spine shiver.

Cliff Lee pitching in Game 1 of the World Series at Citizens Bank Park? Against Roy Halladay?

It was just too good to be true, wasn’t it?

“I pulled for a lot of those guys, but it’s weird, when a team gets rid of you, you kind of like seeing them lose a little bit. I know that’s weird but part of me wanted them to win where I could face them in the World Series, too. It would have been a lot of fun. You’d like to think that they need you to win type of stuff, when that's really not the case,” Lee said from Tuesday’s media day at AT&T Park in San Francisco, 3,000 miles away from South Philly.

“When a team gets rid of you, it's funny how you have a knack for stepping up a little more when you face them. There’s a little more incentive to beat them, and that’s definitely the case with me watching the game. I was in between. I didn’t want to have to face them or want to have to face the Giants. I let that series play out, and I pulled for those guys individually, but I didn’t mind seeing them get beat, either, just because they got rid of me. That is what it is.”

Oh that Cliff… telling the Phillies they got what they deserved?

Nevertheless, while folks lament the Phillies’ offensive (used as offensive as in a segment of a baseball game and offensive as in deplorable) flop in NLCS, it’s almost like a little, sarcastic dig at the team’s oh-so sensitive brass that Cliff Lee will pitch on Wednesday night. Only instead of pitching for or against the Phillies, Lee will pitch against the not-so celebrated hitters of the San Francisco Giants at AT&T Park.

Coincidentally, the last time Lee pitched at AT&T Park he pitched a complete game, four-hitter to beat the Giants in his debut with the Phillies on July 31, 2009. They weren’t the same Giants that Lee will face on Wednesday night, but they were not too far off. If anything, Lee was different then… he walked two batters.

“It does seem like a long time ago, but I remember I went through all nine innings that was pretty good,” Lee said of his Phillies’ debut. “And I remember I almost went out of this park opposite field, too. That was fun.”

Yes, he’s still as cool as ever. Unflappable might be the best word because he never, ever changes his approach or his routine. He still runs on and off the field, still pantomimes a throw into center field from behind the mound before he begins to warm up before an inning, and still throws that low 90s-mph fastball.

Of course he throws that cut fastball exactly where he wants it to go. He throws it no matter what the situation is or if he’s behind in the count. Hey, the ball is in his hands so everyone else will have to adjust to him. Better yet, he was in charge after games, too. He didn’t treat his arm with ice like most pitchers. Even after a career-high 272 innings pitched (counting the playoffs) in ‘09, Lee never strapped his arm in an ice pack after a game. In 16 of his 39 starts Lee pitched into the eighth inning. He averaged 104 pitches per start and hardly walked anyone.

And then he got even better.

It might be that mindset that helped the Rangers through the ALDS for the first time and then to the World Series for the first time in franchise history, and yes, that includes when it started out in Washington as the Senators in 1961.

“Tremendous work ethic. You know, you see him from afar, you never see him prepare to do what he does out there,” Texas manager Ron Washington said during his media day press conference. “He has tremendous work ethic, and more than anything else, he brings influence. The way he goes about his business, the energy which he plays with, the passion he has for the game, the things he goes out there and never let affect him, those are the type of qualities that a No. 1 guy brings, and it just influences every other pitcher that follows him or that's on that pitching staff. That's what he brought to us. That's one thing I didn't know.

“I knew he was a quality pitcher, but I never got a chance to see how each day that he prepares for his starts. It's amazing the work he puts in to go out there and then accomplish what he accomplishes.”

Washington is Lee’s fourth manager since the start of the 2009 season and he is also the fourth manager to say the same thing about the lefty. The Phillies gushed over Lee a lot during the postseason, too.

Of course where Lee endeared himself the most to the fans and his teammates in Philadelphia was during the playoffs. Sure, there was a bit of the dreaded “dead-arm” phase toward the end of the regular season, but when properly rested thanks to the dark nights in the playoff schedule so the networks could regroup[1], Lee also re-gathered himself, too. All he did was put together the greatest postseason by a Phillies pitcher, ever.

Better than Cole Hamels, Steve Carlton, Robin Roberts, Tug McGraw, Jim Konstanty and maybe even better than ol’ Grover Cleveland Alexander against the Red Sox in the 1915 World Series. Lee didn’t make his playoff debut with a no-hitter like Halladay, or end his maiden postseason game with outs against Hall of Famers Babe Ruth or Harry Hooper, but Lee was a lot more consistent.

He allowed one run against the Rockies in Game 1 of the NLDS and took the lead into the eighth inning of the clinching Game 4 before errors and the bullpen cost him a win. Had Lee held on in that one he would have become just the third person in Major League Baseball history to win five games in a single postseason.

Added all up, Lee went 4-0 with a 1.56 ERA, including a masterful 10-strikeout, three-hitter in Game 3 of the NLCS and a 10-strikeout gem in Game 1 of the World Series where the best the Yankees could do was score an unearned run in the ninth.

No, there wasn’t a no-hitter in there, but Lee got the Phillies to the World Series and won both of the team’s games there.

So it makes sense that there is some sensitivity amongst guys like Ruben Amaro Jr. in regards to Lee. In fact, the 2010 season was almost a mirror image of 2009 for Lee. He was again traded in July from an American League doormat to a contender. Again he had some back and arm issues where he missed both the first month of the season and a handful of starts late in the year.

But when the playoffs started, Lee has been even better than he was last year with the Phillies. Going into his Game 1that will not be played in Philadelphia on Wednesday night, Lee is 3-0 with an 0.75 ERA with 34 strikeouts and one walk in 24 innings.

Pretty good, huh?

Now here’s the thing… give up on Lee at your peril. The Yankees couldn’t swing a deal for him and paid for it during the regular-season and the playoffs. Tampa Bay could have used him, too, but in the end he beat them twice in the postseason. Sure, the Phillies picked up Roy Oswalt and he was spectacular during the second half of the season. But if Amaro thought for a second that the offense would be outdone by the Giants’ lineup in the NLCS, do you think he would have given up on Cliff Lee?

Maybe the better question is just what was about Lee that keeps folks in Philly talking? After all, he arrived at the end of July and was gone by the second week of December. That’s not a long time at all and yet we’re still talking about the guy and paying attention whenever he pitches a big game.

Just what was it about Cliff Lee?

---

[1] It’s not exactly top-notch planning that the first game of the World Series will be played on the same night as the opening of the NBA season. Hey, I’d rather watch baseball over just about anything, but I understand why a person would want to watch LeBron James and the Miami Heat play the Sixers on Wednesday night. LeBron made a little news earlier this year and people love/dislike him so much that they can’t take their eyes off him. Apparently the MLB brass and the networks whiffed on this one.

... and Cliff Lee is ready to go in Game 1

Let’s just cut right to it…

The Phillies choked. They blew it. Worse, they choked and blew it with what might have been the best team ever assembled in franchise history—at least after Ruben Amaro Jr. traded for Roy Oswalt.

Yet the idea that the 2010 Phillies were as great as advertised doesn’t really matter anymore because the best team won’t be representing the National League in the World Series this year. Oh sure, the Giants deserve credit because they responded to every bit of gamesmanship and intimidation the Phillies threw at them. Between that phony, Pat Burrell, and Tim Lincecum shouting at Phillies’ players, and Jonathan Sanchez calling out Chase Utley, causing the benches to clear in Game 6, the Giants deserve some credit.

But let’s not give a team with Pat Burrell, Cody Ross and Aubrey Huff in the middle of the batting order too much credit. After all, the Phillies pitchers held them to a .249 average with just two different players hitting homers. The Phillies even outscored the Giants in the six games, 20-19. This was the same Giants that batted just .212 against the Braves in the NLDS. You know, the Braves that the Phillies manhandled during the regular season.

Frankly, it was a sickening display of offensive futility during the playoffs. They batted .212 against the Reds in the NLDS and .216 against the Giants. Sure, Lincecum, Sanchez and Matt Cain are solid pitchers. Lincecum is a bona fide star, in fact, and manager Bruce Bochy has enough versatility in the bullpen to match up, hitter by hitter, late in the game.

Oh yes, the Giants can pitch. In fact, they pitch very well. However, imagine how great a good pitching team will look against a bunch of hitters who were lost. How lost? Take a look at the schizophrenic postseason from Ryan Howard and compare it to his typical production.

It was just last season where Howard set the record for consecutive postseason games with an RBI and was named MVP of the NLCS. That was the postseason of, “Just get me to the plate, boys,” in Game 4 of the NLDS when the Rockies were just an out away from sending the series back to Philadelphia for a deciding Game 5. Moreover, 10 of Howard’s 15 postseason hits in 2009 went for extra-bases and the 17 RBIs in 15 games were one of the big reasons why the Phillies got back to the World Series.

This year Howard had good looking stats, batting .318, posting a .400 on-base percentage and a .500 slugging average. But Howard hit no home runs and got no RBIs. No, it’s not Howard’s fault that there were runners on base when he hit, but when there were men on base he struck out. Seven of Howard’s 12 strikeouts in the NLCS came with runners on base and five of those came with runners in scoring position.

Strikeouts only equal one out, sure, but there are productive outs where runners move up and fielders are forced to make plays. Considering that Howard had three three-strikeout games, including back-to-back triple Ks in Game 5 and 6, the heart of the Phillies’ order was punchless.

“If the production is there, you can tend to get away from strikeouts,” manager Charlie Manuel said. “But I feel especially after Ryan got hurt that he didn't find his swing. I feel like I know that he’s a better hitter than what we saw at the end of the year.”

The same goes for many of the Phillies’ hitters, especially Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley. Utley’s swing looked off most of the postseason as if it were difficult for him to complete it. The question many asked of Manuel was about the second baseman’s health, which is always an issue late in the season. However, straight answers never were offered and the assumption was Utley was properly healed from the thumb injury he suffered in June.

But the Phillies finished the season with the best record in baseball and closed the year by going 49-19. They had Halladay and Oswalt and Hamels lined up and all three lost in the playoffs. Sure, the Phillies pitched as well—maybe better—than the Giants, but that was it.

“I don't think we ever got our offense clicking,” Manuel said. “It always went up and down. We hit a hot streak, especially after Houston swept us earlier in the year. From that period on, we started winning a lot of games. But we weren't blowing people out and weren't really hitting like we can. It seemed like we never put up runs like I know we can.”

Maybe there was something to the injuries or maybe the preparedness. Even the victories in the postseason came in games where something extraordinary occurred. Halladay pitched a no-hitter in one and Hamels a five-hit shutout in another. In Game 2 of the NLDS the Phillies scored five unearned runs and in Game 2 of the NLCS, Oswalt pitched a three-hitter.

Finally, it came down to Halladay pitching six innings on a strained groin just to send the series back to Philadelphia.

But back home where the fans where waiting for hits that never came and runs that never circled the bases, all that was left was disappointment. The team with the best record in baseball fell to a team that batted Pat Burrell cleanup in a NLCS game... Pat Burrell?

When it finally came to an end it was Howard standing at the plate, watching as the third strike buzzed past just above his knees.

“Just get me to the plate, boys.”

“It's kind of a sucky way to end the game, a sucky way to end the year, you know, being that guy,” Howard said. “But I'll have to try and take that and use it as motivation and come back next year.

"I can't say what I want to say.”

No, he can’t, but there will be plenty of talk this winter about that last at-bat and the last series. Plain and simple, the Phillies blew it. Choked. The Phillies were the big bullies on the school yard and they got punched back and didn’t know what to do.

“I just don’t think any of us saw this happening,” closer Brad Lidge said. “I felt like we had the best team in baseball this year. It doesn’t always work out. Unfortunately, we just caught a team that seems to be doing everything right. They got the last hook in there. We just didn’t get our best game out there tonight. So shocked is a good word.”

Shocked like the rest of us that a team with hitters like the Giants could deliver more than the Phillies. Then again, the old, injured sage Jamie Moyer once played for a Seattle club that won 116 games, but lasted just six in the ALCS, To this day Seattle is only one of two franchises never to make it to the World Series.

“We had the best record in baseball, but when you get to the playoffs it really doesn’t mean anything,” Moyer said. “Everything starts just like it did in April. Everyone starts at zero. Now it’s about who is going to play the best, who is going to get the key hits and we fell short. …”

Cliff Lee will pitch in Game 1 of the World Series. Roy Halladay will not.

Cliff Lee's influence on Cole Hamels

SAN FRANCISCO — Let’s discuss Cliff Lee for a moment…

Alright, alright, we get it. No one wants to talk about Cliff Lee like that. It hurts too much or something. But after he fired a 13-strikeout, two-hitter in Yankee Stadium to give the Rangers a 2-1 lead in the ALCS, we’ll just leave that stuff with one, short and sweet point…

It’s not like the Phillies would be in any different position than they are right now if Cliff Lee were still on the Phillies. They swept the Reds, Roy Halladay lost Game 1 of the NLCS, Roy Oswalt won Game 2, and Cole “Roy” Hamels is ready to go in Game 3. It wouldn’t matter if the Phillies had Cliff Lee, Roy Halladay and Grover Cleveland Alexander—they still would be tied with the Giants headed to Game 3 with Hamels ready to take the ball.

Instead, let’s discuss what Cliff Lee left behind when he was traded to the Mariners last December for Phillippe Aumont, Tyson Gillies and J.C. Ramirez, barely a month after he put together the best postseason by a Phillies’ pitcher since ol’ Pete Alexander. But, strangely enough, Lee’s lasting impression on Hamels and his resurgence in 2010 all starts with a September gem pitched by Pedro Martinez against the Mets.

Remember that one? Pedro dialed it up for eight scoreless innings with just six hits and 130 purposeful pitches. Frankly, it was an artistic and masterful pitched game by Pedro against the Mets. In baseball, there is the nuance and the minutia that the devout understand, but the genius supersedes all. It stands out and hovers over the season in a way that a highlight film cannot capture.

Pedro painted that Sunday night game in September at the Bank. Sure, it was the 130 pitches that opened the most eyes, but that’s just half of it. It was the way he showed off those 130 pitches. For instance, David Wright saw nothing but fastballs in his first three at-bats without so much as a sniff at an off-speed pitch. But in his fourth at-bat Pedro struck out Wright after starting him off with a pair of change ups before turning back to the heat.

After strike three, Wright walked away from the plate like he didn’t know if he was coming or going.

Wright wasn’t alone. After throwing nine total changeups to every hitter the first time through the Mets’ lineup—except for Wright, of course—no hitter saw anything more off-speed than a handful of curves the second time around. That changeup, Pedro’s best pitch, wasn’t thrown at all.

So by the third and fourth time through the Mets could only guess. By that point Pedro was simply trying not to outsmart himself or his catcher Carlos Ruiz, who seemed as if he was just along for the ride. In fact, Pedro said that the he purposely bounced a pitch in the dirt (a changeup) that teased Daniel Murphy into making a foolhardy dash for third base that led to the final out of the eighth inning.

Yes, he intentionally threw one in the dirt on a 0-1 offering. Whether or not he did it thinking Murphy might make a break for third is a different issue, but not one to put past Pedro’s thinking.   

So mesmerized by the audacity, fearlessness and the brilliance of Pedro’s pitching, that I thought it would be wise to ask one of the team’s pitchers to offer some insight from a pitcher who could better understand the nuance of the effort better than me. Sure, it’s possible I was over thinking the performance, but it really was quite fascinating trying to figure out the chess match that occurred on the mound. Needless to say, Cliff Lee was my first choice to pepper with questions, but he had already bolted for the evening.

Then Hamels walked into the room. Certainly Hamels would be able to satisfy my need for overwrought analysis. After all, he is a pitcher, right? A pitcher has to be fascinated by the art of pitching…

Right?

What I learned was that Hamels didn’t see things my way when I asked him my questions.

I said something like, “do you look at a game like the one Pedro just pitched the way a painter or a musician might admire another artist? Was it fun to just watch the pitch sequences and wonder what he might do next?”

The answer?

“No.”

“I don’t look at things that way. I just saw it as a guy going out there and doing his job,” Hamels said.

Certainly there is something to be said for a guy doing his job. That’s an admirable trait for a man to have. But we weren’t talking about a guy who spent all day working in the mines and then went home and helped his neighbor put in a patio. This was Pedro Martinez we were trying to talk about. If Sandy Koufax was the Rembrandt of the mound, Pedro certainly was Picasso.

But at that stage of his development, pitching was just hammer-and-nail type stuff to Hamels. Not even a year after he had won the MVP in the NLCS and World Series, Hamels had just won a game two days before Pedro’s work of art to improve his record to 9-9 and his ERA to 4.21. Clearly those were the numbers of a pitcher fighting against himself.

Eventually Hamels got it. Yes, it took some time away for the field and maybe even some work with a mental guru/coach, but Hamels finally understood what pitching coach Rich Dubee and manager Charlie Manuel had been trying to tell him.

He needed more tools in his belt than just the hammer and nail. Hamels’ arsenal of fastball and changeup just wasn’t enough anymore.

“He’s added a cutter,” Manuel said during Monday afternoon’s workout at AT&T Park on the eve of Game 3. “His fastball, his velocity is up from last year. Basically he sits there right now I’d say he sits there like 92, 94, 95 consistently, and whereas before he was like 88, 92. And I think the cutter’s helped him.”

It doesn’t hurt that Halladay throws a cutter—a pitch that is held very much like a four-seam fastball except for the pitcher’s thumb, which rests closer to his index finger. Halladay (obviously) has had great success with the pitch this season. Mariano Rivera could go down as the greatest closer and the greatest breaker of bats because of his hard cutter. Just like the split-finger fastball that Bruce Sutter and Mike Scott made famous in the 1970s and 1980s, the cutter is the pitch these days.

Still, the light bulb didn’t go off above Hamels’ head until he watched Cliff Lee throw it during the postseason of ’09. Actually, Lee’s cutter has been so good during the 2010 postseason that the Yankees’ announcers have accused the pitcher of cheating by using rosin on the ball. But it was such a silly premise that Yankees’ manager Joe Girardi debunked it.

Adding on his latest gem, Lee is 3-0 with a 0.75 ERA and 34 strikeouts in 24 innings this season. Coupled with his run for the Phillies in 2009, Lee is 7-0 with a 1.26 ERA with 67 strikeouts and seven walks in 64 1/3 innings.

Now the question is if Lee gets some inspiration points to his stat line for his influence on Hamels.

“I think being able to watch Cliff Lee last year throwing the cutter and how much it really helped out this game, and having Roy Halladay come over and seeing what a significant pitch it is to his repertoire, I felt it could be a very good pitch for me to add especially because it goes the other direction as a change-up,” Hamels said. “It’s just a few different miles an hour off in between a fastball and a change-up so it’s just kind of makes it a little bit harder for hitters to really pick a pitch and a specific location to really get there type of better approach.”

Hamels picked it up quickly, too. By the third game of the season his cutter was good enough that the lefty could throw it confidently in any situation or any count. Better yet, the addition of the cutter with a curveball for show, too, has made Hamels’ best pitch better.

And to think, all he had to do was watch what the pitchers were doing out there.

“He can throw the ball inside effectively and it opens up the strike zone for his best pitch, the change up,” said ex-teammate and current Giants’ center fielder, Aaron Rowand.

Of course it’s just one pitch and the selection of when and where to throw it is always important. However, Hamels finally added to his repertoire just like Manuel and Dubee wanted, and all he had to do was watch what was going on.

Measuring the postseason gems

CINCINNATI — The so-called year of the pitcher has made a seamless transition into the postseason. Obviously, Roy Halladay’s no-hitter against the Reds in Game 1 of the NLDS stands out, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Heading into Saturday’s action, the Texas Rangers had allowed just one run against Tampa Bay in the first two games of the ALDS. That wouldn’t be as extraordinary if the Rays hadn’t finished the regular season with the best record in the American League and were one game behind the Phillies for best record in the majors.

In Game 1 Texas got a 10-strikeouts, zero-walks gem from Cliff Lee followed by 6 1/3 innings of shutout ball from lefty C.J. Wilson, a pitcher wrapping up his first season as a starter in the big leagues and his first real chance to star since 2005 when he was in Double-A.

Cole Hamels again tore through the Reds’ lineup in Game 3 of the NLDS, clinching the series with a five-hit, nine-strikeout shutout. As a result, the Phillies got their first-ever sweep of a playoff series (they were swept, coincidentally, by the Reds in 1976), posting a 1.00 ERA and holding the Reds to a .124 batting average.

Think about that for a second… the Reds led the National League in runs, batting average, homers, on-base percentage and slugging, but got just four runs and 11 hits in three games.

The year of the pitcher, indeed.

Nevertheless, the pitching performance that everyone has been yapping about since it went down on Thursday night is Tim Lincecum’s 14-strikeout, two-hitter in the Giants’ 1-0 victory over the Braves in Game 1of the other NLDS matchup. Forget that the Giants only scratched out one (controversial) run against Derek Lowe or the fact that the Giants weren’t exactly tearing the cover off the ball, the big theme of this postseason is all pitching.

Then again, that doesn’t make this season any different from any other baseball playoffs. However, through just the first round this year there have been as many top-shelf pitching performances by guys in their playoff debuts in recent memory. In fact, there has even been some chatter that Lincecum’s two-hitter was a better pitched game than Halladay’s no-hitter.

Certainly by the Bill James devised Game Score, Lincecum’s gem registered a 96 and was the second-best pitched game in the history of the postseason. That, of course, is according to the formula that skews toward strikeouts and innings pitched, but gives no credence to efficiency, the significance of the game, or emotion. For instance, the highest rated postseason game ever was a 98 by Roger Clemens’ one-hit, 15-strikeout victory over the Mariners in Game 4 of the 2000 ALCS, a game that gave the Yankees a 3-1 lead in the series.

Meanwhile, Jack Morris’ 10-inning shutout in Game 7 of the 1991 World Series rated just an 84. Hamels’ shutout on Sunday night to beat the Reds scored an 86 and the Phillies’ lefty threw a half-dozen fewer pitches and one less inning than Morris.

Plus, it wasn’t the seventh game of the World Series, either.

Anyway, to rate Lincecum’s two-hitter higher than Halladay’s no-hitter, Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series, or even Morris’ gritty gem, is just plain silly. This isn’t to take anything away from Lincecum, who was brilliant in the Giants’ Game 1 victory over the Braves, but it wasn’t nearly as good as Halladay’s no-hitter in Game 1.

Do we really need to spell it out?

Well, OK… try these:

• Halladay threw just the second no-hitter in postseason play. Moreover, Halladay was the first pitcher to carry a no-hitter into the eighth inning of a playoff game since Jim Lonborg did it in the 1967 World Series. The Major League Baseball postseason began in 1903 and has taken place every season since 1904 and 1994. Imagine the tension that goes on in a typical no-hitter, let alone one in the playoffs.

• Halladay threw a no-hitter against the team that led the league in every important offensive category (and even some unimportant ones), while Lincecum beat a team that struggled at the plate during the final month of the season and featured a lineup without Chipper Jones and Martin Prado.

• Did you see the swings the Reds took at the pitches Halladay threw? He owned them. Better yet, Halladay needed just 104 pitches to finish his no-hitter. Lincecum needed 119 pitches to finish his game and gave up a pair of doubles, including a ringing shot by Brian McCann, a hitter who has batted .381 in his career against the pitcher. Conversely, Halladay gave up 13 hits to the Reds in a loss in June, but figured out how to get them out in the playoffs.

• Lincecum gave up a hit to the first batter of the game, removing all the pressure and tension that goes with throwing a no-hitter. The kid could simply settle in and go about his work. Halladay was so good that it would have been shocking for him not to throw the no-hitter.

Frankly, it seems as some have claimed that Lincecum’s gem was better than the no-hitter just to be different or make an argument. Whatever. Either way, it’s not correct. Halladay’s no-hitter was dominant and sublime. It was a work of art—poetry come to life.

However, where Lincecum scores points comes from this interview with Wiley Wiggins, the actor that played Mitch Kramer in the phenomenal Dazed and Confused. Mitch Kramer was a pitcher who won big ballgames, too. That ought to count for something.

Oswalt turns Cliff Lee into a fond memory

I haven’t counted, but I’m willing to bet that the player I wrote the most about during the first half of the baseball season was Cliff Lee. Some of the reasoning behind this deduction is obvious because for about seven months after Lee was traded to Seattle on a whirlwind December day in which the Phillies got Roy Halladay, he was the lightning rod we all fired strikes at.

The Phillies would have been better with Cliff Lee, we reasoned, not wrongly. Worse, general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. never offered a reason for dealing away Lee that we would accept. Oh sure, we got it, but we didn’t like it.

The constant harping about Lee always got back to a couple of main points. For one, there was the money thing. It wasn’t our money and as a public trust that has sold out 108 straight games in the relatively brand-new park, the team ought to spend, spend, spend. Then, there was the idea of the Phillies going down the stretch with a starting rotation that featured two guys who won Cy Young awards, and another who was MVP of the NLCS and World Series. Would any team want face a team that went Halladay, Lee and Hamels in three straight games of a playoff series?

No. No way.

But a quick perusal of the archives of this little site shows that Lee’s name hasn’t been mentioned since July 29. That date—two days before the annual trading deadline—not only is the anniversary of Lee’s arrival in Philadelphia where he wore the Phillies’ pinstripes for approximately three months covering just 17 starts, including the postseason, but also it’s the date of Roy Oswalt’s arrival to Philly. It kind of makes sense now why Lee hasn’t been mentioned all that much anymore.

In his first seven outings for the Phils, Oswalt is 4-1 with a 1.89 ERA with 41 strikeouts in 47 2/3 innings. No, Oswalt hasn’t won the Cy Young Award like Lee, but he has won the MVP in the 2005 NLCS with the Astros. Better yet, Oswalt says he pushed through the usual “dead arm” stage of the season that seems to strike high-innings pitchers late in the summer and certainly will see his workload increase the rest of the way. Manager Charlie Manuel hinted as much on Friday afternoon when he alluded to the experience Roys Halladay and Oswalt have with pitching on short rest. If that’s not planting a seed of thought, nothing is.

Regardless, Oswalt’s arrival has made us stash Lee’s name away into the attic of happy memories after he posted the greatest statistical postseason by a Phillies pitcher since Grover Cleveland Alexander in 1915, which only makes sense. Still, after pining for Lee into July, some have gone into a full-out sprint in the other direction by wondering if all the carrying on was wrong. Maybe trading Lee away wasn’t such a bad idea after all, went the reasoning, especially when one considers that Lee missed the first month of the season, got traded to Texas, slumped a bit and now is struggling with some back discomfort. Since being traded to the Rangers, Lee has gone 0-3 with an 8.26 ERA during the past month and just got an anti-inflammatory injection for his back this week.

That’s a far cry from what Oswalt has done in his seven starts with the Phillies, or even what Lee did in his first seven outings with the Phillies last year at this time. Lee had a 3.37 ERA and 47 strikeouts in 48 innings when he first joined the club last year.

So yes, statistically Oswalt has been better. Moreover, because Lee might be injured Oswalt is clearly the more valuable pitcher right now.

See, trading Lee wasn’t such a bad idea after all… right?

Well, yes and no. The yes should be obvious because Oswalt is healthy, happy and pitching well. Before he was traded to Philadelphia there was concern that Oswalt, a quiet and private man from Weir, Mississippi (population 553), might not fit in well in a hardscrabble northeast city. Sometimes, athletes in Philadelphia are judged more by emotion and personality than talent or results. Not exactly the most demonstrative man on the mound and straightforward and soft spoken with the press, it’s understandable if Oswalt was apprehensive.

Yet by all accounts, Oswalt, like Lee, has fit in quite well in Philadelphia. Of course the excitement of a pennant race has something to do with that, but that’s kind of the whole point… right?

“I can tell he’s happy here,” said Brad Lidge, Oswalt’s teammate from their days in Houston. “You can see that extra pep in his step. I think he feels the change in energy and he’s enjoying being part of this as opposed to just another season going by. You can see him thinking about trying to achieve that ultimate goal.

“And he’s throwing great.”

Conversely, the move to get Oswalt before the deadline is an admission that the Phillies needed a pitcher of high caliber. Lee’s contract status might have spooked Amaro into trading him, but that never changed the desire to have three horses at the top of the rotation.

And now that he has them, Manuel hopes they are ready to run for the next month-plus.

“The best part about that is Halladay and Oswalt have pitched on short rest,” Manuel said. “They have that experience and that becomes very big.”

That’s down the road, of course, but for now the best part about Halladay and Oswalt is that they made folks forget about Cliff Lee for a little while. Besides, Oswalt has a no-trade clause and a contract for 2011. Looks like the Phillies are stuck with him.

How deep do the Phillies' problems run?

CHICAGO — At this stage it’s pretty easy being negative. Considering that the Phillies have lost six of eight games to NL Central doormats Pittsburgh and Chicago, and struggled even to score runs off the Cubs at Wrigley Field, yeah, it’s easy to be down on the Phillies.

There’s a lot to be disappointed about, too. Cliff Lee is gone, traded for prospects that may not be able to help the club for the length of the next contract the All-Star lefty signs. Plus, because general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. thought the Phils were better off without Brett Myers, a pitcher who is putting together the best year of his career with the Astros, the Phillies’ rotation is left with Roy Halladay, Cole Hamels and a bunch of guys.

Sometimes those guys pitch well, but most of the time they don’t.

Indeed it was a tough winter for Amaro. Juan Castro, his addition to the bench, was given his unconditional waivers last Saturday. That was because Placido Polanco, the splashy free-agent signee of the off-season, had returned from a stint on the disabled list.

Moreover, Amaro called lefty reliever Scott Eyre’s bluff… and lost. Eyre claimed he would retire rather than play for a team other than the Phillies and kept his word. Future Hall-of-Famer Pedro Martinez was not offered a contract following a postseason in which he started 30 percent of the team’s final 10 games, including two of the World Series games at Yankee Stadium, and now also appears to be retired.

Both pitchers wanted to play for the Phillies, and certainly would have contributed to the team. But for whatever reason their help wasn’t needed. Hell, even Chan Ho Park took a smaller contract than the one offered to him by the Phillies in order to pitch for the Yankees.

Just to pile on, last-year’s free-agent signee Raul Ibanez has struggled after a winter where he had surgery for a sports hernia, and Shane Victorino seems unable to get a hit unless it’s a homer or extra-base knock. Meanwhile, free-agent to be Jayson Werth has turned surly and his attitude questioned as his batting average plummets and his strikeout totals pile up. In four games at Wrigley Field last weekend, Werth struck out nine times—the first five of those came in the first eight plate appearances where he didn’t even move the bat from his shoulder.

“Swing,” manager Charlie Manuel said exacerbatedly after a game in which the team racked up eight strikeouts looking as frozen as an angry possum cowering under the back tires of a car on a pitch-black night.

Meanwhile, Brad Lidge hasn’t been bad, but he hasn’t exactly inspired confidence, either. Ryan Madson’s season has been better known for his ability to kick chairs like a wacko David Akers more than setting up games. Off-season addition Jose Contreras has been inconsistent, while countryman Danys Baez has turned into another one of Amaro’s follies.

Quick, does someone know the opposite of the word, architect?

The most frustrating part of a season that has the Phillies fighting to make up 5½ games in the suddenly competitive NL East, and has driven Manuel crazier than anything has been the offense’s inability to score runs consistently. Post-game meetings with the manager are like summer reruns where the former hitting coach attempts to explain away the dearth of hitting and energy before finally giving up and falling back on his old standbys.

“You guys are stat guys... take a look. If you can't see where the problem is at,” Manuel said after Sunday night’s loss where the ace Halladay gave up six runs in six innings while a lefty named Tom Gorzelanny shut them down. “I don't have to sit here and say anything about anybody. You should be able to read the stats and read what happens and watch the game every night. I don't have to sit here and say anything negative about anybody. It speaks for itself. Nobody can take away your performance. No one can hide it, though, neither.”

The issue for Manuel is inconsistency. Lots of inconsistency.

“It’s the same thing every night,” he said.

Manuel is wrong about the inconsistency. The thing is the only way his team has been consistent this season is with its maddening and inexplicable inconsistency. For a manager who prides himself on his knowledge of hitting with intricate insight on nearly every hitter he’s ever seen, the lack of production from his hitters is especially maddening. In fact, sometimes it seems as if Manuel prefers the teams he coached in Cleveland even though they never won the World Series.

Hitting solves a lot of problems, goes Manuel’s logic. When a team hits, he says, mistakes don’t stand out and the pitching looks better if it’s not really the case.

“Everything looks good when you hit,” Manuel said.

In the interest in fairness, however, Amaro was able to made deals to get three different Cy Young Award winners on his team (even though he dumped two of them). He also put deals in place for Hamels and Howard. With Howard it appears as if the slugger will be with the Phillies for the rest of his career. Halladay likely will finish his career with the Phillies, too. Those players are a very strong cornerstone.

However, Lee is gone, presumably over money though we’ve never received a straight or satisfying answer as to why the pitcher was traded. That’s especially maddening considering Amaro threw good money at bad contracts for Baez and Castro, as well as a three-year deal for starter Joe Blanton at $8 million per season.

Moreover, the team will be saddled with $23 million owed to Lidge and Ibanez in 2011, with extensions for Jimmy Rollins, Ryan Madson and Hamels.

The bottom line is that the Phillies still need pitching and a bat or two in the outfield. Sure, Domonic Brown is on the way, but that still doesn’t answer the pitcher issue…

Or why two guys like Lee or Myers were allowed to walk away.

Phillies want what they already had

The most telling story I’ve heard about the Phillies lately comes from Braves’ manager Bobby Cox when he heard that his NL East rivals were able to make a deal with the Blue Jays for Roy Halladay. When told that Halladay was joining up with the two-time defending National League champs, Cox didn’t quite break into hysterics like Nancy Kerrigan when she was kneecapped (literally) by a lead pipe, but it was close.

Cox says he cursed at a rate he saves for the likes of C.B. Bucknor or Dan Iassogna. It was more than angry over the fact that the Phillies had added the best pitcher in the game to a roster that went to the World Series twice in a row. Cox was upset because he’d been on the other side and knows what pitchers like Halladay can do for a team.

Remember back when the Braves, fresh off two straight trips to the World Series, added Greg Maddux to the staff with John Smoltz, Tom Glavine and Steve Avery? The troubling part wasn’t that the Braves suddenly had three future Hall of Famers and a fourth guy—Avery—who had already piled up two 18-win seasons and an MVP in the NLCS before he had turned 23. Nope, that wasn’t the part that drove everyone upside down.

The part that was the most heart wrenching was that with Maddux the Braves suddenly had three future Hall of Famers who were not even in their primes yet. All three guys were 26 or 27 when they joined up together and each had four seasons where they won at least 14 games in a season. In the case of Maddux and Glavine, 20 wins per season was the base line, while Smoltz, the least accomplished of the trio at the time, is the only pitcher to ever win at least 200 games and save at least 150.

Nope, the Braves weren’t messing around back then and when he heard that the Phillies had traded for Halladay, he saw history repeating itself. The Phillies, like the Braves, were poised to dominate the NL East for at least half of the next decade considering the ages of their stars of the rotation and the ability of their hitters. The Braves and Mets were going to have a tough time.

But then Cox heard that the Phillies had traded Cliff Lee and suddenly he wasn’t so worried any more. Oh sure, Halladay and Cole Hamels is a pretty nice combo, especially considering the fact that Hamels is just 26 the way Smoltz, Glavine and Maddux were two decades ago. Halladay, 33, was a bit older, but he had moved past the injury-prone years and was looking at another five seasons of top-level pitching.

Add Halladay to a rotation with Hamels and Lee and it’s the modern version of the ’93 Braves with J.A. Happ starring as Avery and Joe Blanton playing the role of Pete Smith. With that rotation the only thing the Phillies would have to worry about is injuries (duh) and whether the National League could win the All-Star Game to give the Phillies home-field advantage in the World Series.

But then Cox found out that the Phillies had traded Lee, too, and suddenly he wasn’t so upset any more. He didn’t have to worry about the best pitching trio in the game because Phils’ general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. believed it was more important for his team to be competitive for many years instead of great this year.

Those weren’t his words, of course, but they could have been. At least that’s the way it seems considering the Phillies added three prospects in J.C. Ramirez, Phillippe Aumont and Tyson Gillies from Seattle for a pitcher who might win his second Cy Young Award if he spends the entire season in the American League. Sure, there was a money aspect to it, too. Amaro says the Phillies could have afforded Lee this season, yes. However, it appears as if he was scared off by demands of a potential long-term deal from Lee’s camp.

This comes despite the fact that if Lee were to pitch 2010 for the Phillies at $9 million and then walked away in the winter because of some over-the-top contract demands, it’s the pitcher who suffers and not the club. At least that’s how it plays out in the always important PR aspect of it.

What makes all of that funny (not ha-ha funny) is the fact that four months after Lee was traded for those minor leaguers, Amaro and the Phillies gave Ryan Howard a five-year, $125 million deal that doesn’t kick in until 2012 and lasts until 2016. This is no to debate the merits of Howard’s contract extension. Good for him, I say. Instead, the curious thing about the contract extension for Howard was that his current deal won’t end until after 2011. And considering that Howard just got a $50,000 bonus for being named to the All-Star team, it’s been a pretty good year for the big fella.

Lee only got $10,000 for making the All-Star team and gets $250,000 more for winning the Cy Young. All he got for putting together the greatest postseason in team history since Grover Cleveland Alexander in 1915 was a trade to Seattle.

But even that’s not the funniest part (again, not ha-ha). The funniest part has been listening to the GM go on and on about how the Phillies need to add pitching possibly before the July 31 trading deadline with this fantastic quote:

“My job is to continue to make this team better.”

He said this long after Lee was traded and now wants to go out and get a pitcher.

“I’m always more concerned about pitching,” Amaro said. “At the end of the day our team should be able to handle some losses in the lineup. With the offensive talent we have, we should be able to absorb some losses. But you can never have enough pitching if you want to contend.

“For me, pitching (remains a priority) because we know our infielders will be back.”

Nope, you can never have enough pitching if you want to contend. That’s what the Phillies’ general manager said on Tuesday afternoon before his team’s extra-inning loss to the Cox’s Braves, where Hamels again pitched well a day after Halladay beat the Braves with a complete-game gem.

However, instead of going for the triple threat with Lee, the Phillies closed out the series against the first-place Braves with 47-year-old lefty Jamie Moyer.

“If we had Cliff Lee, we wouldn’t have Roy Halladay,” Amaro said. “It’s pretty simple. Time and circumstance dictate what you can and can’t do. We felt like we were in a position to hold on to one and not the other, and long-term we couldn’t leave the cupboard bare.”

Oh, but the GM said the team could have kept them both in 2010. Instead, he’s talking about years down the road because in the Phillies’ world it seems it is better to be competitive than great.

Philly boy Roy(s)?

Typically, this is the spot where we go into the full courtpress into why the Phillies should go after Roy Oswalt from the Astros. Unload the minor leagues, might be the mantra. Another point would be something about how the window of opportunity only opens so often and closes very quickly.

In fact, that’s what we trotted out there when the suggestion was made to go get Pedro Martinez, Roy Oswalt, Cliff Lee, Jim Thome and, (gulp!) Barry Bonds.

Pat Burrell? Nope. No thanks.

Nevertheless, just think how perfect it would be for the Phillies to go after Oswalt. For one, reports from Ed Price over at AOL Fanhouse indicate that the hard-throwing righty would waive his no-trade clause to go to the Yankees, Cardinals or Phillies. Think about that for a second… a Cy Young Award contender and the MVP of the 2005 NLCS, wants to be sent to Philadelphia. Remember not too long ago when players couldn’t get out of here fast enough?

Wasn’t Ed Wade the general manager then?

Well, coincidentally (or not), Wade is the GM for the Astros with a decent history of making deals with his old club. Plus, Wade’s penchant for filling his roster with ex-Phillies appears to be something of a fetish. Hey, the guy has a thing for the Phillies… there’s nothing wrong with that, right?

In this case, however, it might not mean much. While Wade really, really likes players that once wore red and white pinstripes, current general manager has a thing for prospects and the future. Amaro is a look-forward type. That’s not as weird as stockpiling his club with players with a certain history, but weird is as weird does. Considering the fact that Amaro traded away a guy who won the American League Cy Young Award in 2008 and put together the greatest postseason by a Phillies pitcher since Grover Cleveland Alexander kind of indicates all one needs to know about this quirky little belief that the kids are the future.

Some of us like to say that the future is now. Nothing is guaranteed in life or baseball and that goes specifically for projecting a tall French-Canadian right-hander named Phillippe Aumont as a cog in the Phillies’ rotation. Baseball has a way of dividing the champs from the chaff pretty quickly and the sometimes it’s just smarter to build a roster around the known.

But the Phillies love those prospects. In fact, they’ve done a pretty good job in building a little stable of All-Stars out of their draft picks. Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins, Carlos Ruiz, Cole Hamels, Ryan Madson, Kyle Kendrick and J.A. Happ are the guys on the current 25-man roster who came through the Phillies system. Not many teams can develop a list of major leaguers like that.

So maybe that means in order to pry Oswalt away from the Astros it would take a major leaguer as opposed to a prospect? Why not, the guy calling the shots with the Astros likes those old Phillies and it’s not like Oswalt is going anywhere for a couple of years. See, if the Phillies were to get Oswalt they would have him for a $16 million salary in 2011 and could exercise a $16 million option for 2012. Not bad.

Not bad because it means the Phillies could have a pair of Roys at the top of the rotation for a good part of the future. And if it takes pitchers like Happ and/or Joe Blanton with a regular like Raul Ibanez, or perhaps (gulp!) Jayson Werth, Amaro still gets to keep his precious, precious prospects.

Let’s get the point… wouldja do it? Considering that Dom Brown is the untouchable and Aumont is the guy the Phillies wanted from Seattle for Lee, what would you be willing to give up to have a pitcher like Oswalt next to Roy Halladay in the rotation.

Or, is the move to wait for the bats to come before adding Pedro again while thinking the Padres are only a good losing streak away from shopping closer Heath Bell.

Me? Well, the future is now, isn’t it?

Pitching help for the Phillies? Absolute-Lee

Following yet another poor outing from Phillies starter Kyle Kendrick, a rough five innings in a rehab assignment at Double-A Reading from Joe Blanton, and at least another three weeks on the disabled list for lefty J.A. Happ, it must have been difficult for diehard Phillies’ fans to follow the game between Texas and Seattle on Friday night.

Actually, following the inning-by-inning reports from Seattle was enough to muster up pangs of jealousy and maybe even a little resentment. Considering the Phillies trotted out Kendrick on Friday and will go with the aged Jamie Moyer on Sunday night, Cliff Lee’s debut for the Mariners was enough to make one want to beat on their head with a shoe.

Or something like that.

Nevertheless, all the old arguments and sports-talk radio styled knee-jerk reactions reemerged even before Lee exited the game after spinning a three-hitter without allowing a walk or a run in seven innings. Add in the eight strikeouts and it’s an insult-to-injury jawn.

That’s especially the case if Moyer rolls out a clunker on ESPN on Sunday night.

Nevertheless, not even 12 hours after his gem for the Mariners reports out of Seattle indicate Lee will likely be headed to free agency this winter. Given his consistency and the fact that his run during the 2009 postseason was the greatest by a Phillies pitcher since Grover Cleveland Alexander, Lee just might be able to demand the long-term deal he’s reported to be seeking. If John Lackey can get five years and more than $80 million from Boston, what will Cliff Lee get?

That’s going to be a big issue for the Mariners, a team that should be right in the thick of things in the AL West this season. Considering that the Mariners have the core group under contract until 2011, Lee should be the team’s lone long-term priority.

Still, from the looks of things it appears as if the Mariners are taking a wait-and-see approach with Lee. According, to a report from ESPN’s Buster Olney, the Mariners and Lee’s agent Darek Braunecker, are at an impasse.

“We're five months away from free agency,” said Braunecker, “so I think that's the most likely scenario at this point.”

“We've not really had any significant discussions with Seattle. I wouldn't anticipate a deal [with the Mariners].”

Now let’s trot this scenario out there just for fun…

Let’s say the Mariners fall way out of the race in the AL West by the All-Star Break while the Phillies remain scuffling along with some inconsistent performances from the starting staff. Perhaps even Cole Hamels’ inconsistency is enough to make some believe that the Phillies need another pitcher to back up Roy Halladay. Let’s just say all of this unfolds just in time for the July 31 trade deadline…

Do the Phillies again swoop in and make another move for Lee?

Since it’s not my money and I was on record as calling the trade to send Lee to Seattle a mistake, then yes, go get him again. If Pedro wants to sign up, go get him, too. After years of doing all the work in Toronto and carrying the Phillies through the first six starts of the season, Halladay deserves a little more help.

General manager Ruben Amaro Jr. doesn’t discuss internal matters, rumors or even share his thoughts on certain matters, so who knows what’s going on in regard to bolstering the pitching. However, when asked about the team’s pitching after Halladay’s spot, manager Charlie Manuel admitted he was a bit worried.

“I’m concerned about our pitching, really,” Manuel said. “We have to show that we can pitch and we gotta show that we can be consistent doing it. But you have to have confidence in your pitchers. I’ve seen our guys pitch and we have to get Happ and Blanton back, though. And the guys we have I have confidence in them, but they have to do the job.”

No one needed to watch Halladay spin a three-hit shutout over the Mets to know he was a good pitcher. After six starts the righty leads the league in innings with 49 to go with the 5-1 record and 1.47 ERA. But take that out of the mix and the Phils’ starters are 5-5 with a 5.18 ERA while allowing the opposition to hit .283 off of them in 17 starts.

If Lee isn’t an option, maybe Roy Oswalt will be one. Either way, the Phillies need some help.

Oh, so you want to talk about crazy trades...

SARASOTA, Fla. — OK, here's one for you...

What if the Phillies traded both Kyle Kendrick and Jamie Moyer to the Mets and got back Johan Santana? Huh? How's that one grab you?

Alright, that doesn't sound fair. Let's say the Phillies throw in some cash, too. Why not? Maybe then they could flip Santana to Seattle to get back Cliff Lee.

Then we'd be getting somewhere.

Look, as far as outlandish and ridiculous ideas go, the Kendrick, Moyer, cash, and Santana for Lee deal I just proposed is not any crazier than the one ESPN put out there when they floated the always mysterious "sources" rumor that had the Phillies dealing away Ryan Howard to St. Louis for the game's greatest player, Albert Pujols. Actually, my idea is a lot less crazy than the Howard-for-Pujols bit because at least it makes sense. No, neither deal is ever going to happen.

Never, never, never, never.

In fact, Phils' general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. called the very notion of it, "irresponsible," on the record to Insider, Jim Salisbury.

So there's that.

But what the hell... at least my idea is reasonable.

Let me explain:

You see, to a team like the Mets — one that stinks and is going nowhere, post-haste -- a pitcher like Santana is a luxury. Better yet, it's like living in a trailer park with an Escalade parked out front. Those are some mixed up priorities and financial irresponsibility. If the Mets can remove Santana's salary quickly, it would be wise.

That doesn't mean they'll do it, though. Wise and baseball GMs are two terms that rarely appear in the same paragraph, let alone right next to each other.

Kendrick makes barely above the minimum and Moyer gets a nice salary so that's what the cash is for. Essentially, the Phillies would be doing the Mets a favor in all aspects. And since the Mariners appear to be spending some cash and rebuilding their roster, maybe they’ll go for the Santana for Lee deal, too.

See how easily that came together? Now someone take me to Bellevue. I want the ESPN suite/

Oh yes, there are many reasons why the Howard-Pujols idea is nuts, and most of them are quite obvious. Yes, Howard was born and raised in the St. Louis suburbs and is revered like a hometown hero. When the season ends Howard goes home to Missouri to hang with his friends and family and uses his home base for his off-season workouts before heading to Florida.

Here’s the thing about that… Pujols is from Missouri, too. Sure, Howard is a hometown hero, but Pujols is a hometown god. Not only is he the best player in the game right now, but he might be the greatest Cardinal ever, too. That’s saying something since Stan Musial (the man who should have gotten the same hero worship and publicity for being one of the greatest hitters the way Ted Williams has) is synonymous with the organization. Just nine years into his career, Pujols is poised to own every major hitting record if he doesn’t get bored with it all. Last spring after the Cardinals visited Clearwater for a Grapefruit League game, I asked hitting connoisseur Charlie Manuel his take on Pujols and he dropped a line on me like he was Yoda or something.

“He can be whatever you want him to be,” Charlie said. “Home runs, ribbies, slugging, average, he can do whatever you want.”

Yes, that was the manager’s way of saying Pujols can do it all.

Look, we know Pujols is really, really good. No needs Charlie Manuel’s explanation to see that. Just watch the guy, for Pete’s sakes. If there is one snake the is out of the can of peanut brittle it’s that maybe the idea of trading Howard (and Pujols, too) means the Phillies see a day when they won’t be able to afford him. Coincidentally, Howard and Pujols have contracts that expire after the 2011 season. By then, of course, both men could have another 100 home runs and 300 RBIs tacked onto their stat sheet.

Even scarier, both players will have their Hall-of-Fame credentials stamped and ready for induction despite the fact that they will just be coming into their athletic prime. Imagine that… born months apart in 1979 and 1980 (Pujols is two months younger), both sluggers are on an unprecedented path and they just now are beginning to enter their prime.

Wow.

But with that kind of talent comes a high price. Howard gets $19 million in salary this year and $20 million in 2011, while Pujols gets $16 million for the next two years. In fact, he’s not even the highest paid player on his team.

Sure, Pujols already has more money than he’ll ever be able to spend, but there is pride, ego and all of that stuff. Maybe at the end of his deal Pujols will want to cash in for all the years he was a relative bargain for the Cardinals. Shoot, if Howard is looking for a deal in the A-Rod range (an average salary of $27.5 million over 10 years), what’s Pujols worth?

Does the treasury even print that much money?

Now try this out—and understand we’re just riffing here… maybe the Phillies might believe that if they have to pay upwards of $30 million per season for one player, why not go all in and get the best guy out there. Hell, if you’re already spending $30 million, what’s another $5 million?

Could that be the logic in all of this?

Who knows? Chances are it was just a way to get a few extra clicks on the ol’ web site and to get people talking about baseball again. Certainly there is no harm in that, is there?

Still, the idea of Howard and Pujols both with expiring contracts looming and the potential salary both men could command is quite intriguing. What makes it even more interesting is the notion that if the Phillies can’t afford to keep a guy like Jayson Werth beyond this season, how in the world are they going to be able to afford Howard and/or Pujols?

Poll numbers strike out

One of the funniest moments from writing about thePhillies for all those years came back in 2002 in the midst of Larry Bowa’s reign of error. It had just come out in one of those ubiquitous Sports Illustrated polls in which the players voted the then-Phillies skipper as the worst in the big leagues.

Sure, it was an ambiguous poll to say the least, but the point was players from around the league saw what was going on inside the Phillies dugout during games and wanted no parts of it. Hell, the team even asked that shots of the manager in the dugout during games be limited. No sense putting the dysfunction out there on the airwaves.

Anyway, Bowa said he didn’t care about what the Sports Illustrated poll indicated when asked before a game at the Vet during the 2003 season. In fact, he didn’t care so much that he spent a good portion of the pre-game meeting with the writers talking about how much he didn’t care and how dumb the players were for not seeing his brilliance. OK, he didn’t say it like that in so many words, but he clearly was bothered by his status in the poll.

The funny part wasn’t Bowa’s reaction to his No. 1 status, but the reaction by the players in the Phillies’ clubhouse. When asked about it, most of the players treated the question as if it were a flaming bag of dog crap on the front porch. Rather than jump on the bag to put out the fire, and thus getting soiled shoes, most of the players just let it smolder itself out. They said all the right things, peppering the writers with a steady barrage of jock-speak clichés.

That is except for Mike Lieberthal, another Bowa foil, who gave the best answer of all.

“If I played on another team I’d hate him, too,” Lieberthal said, before explaining how it must look in the Phillies’ dugout to a bystander. Gotta love Lieby… he had trouble figuring out how to use those clichés knowing that his true thoughts were much more fun.

So what’s the point? Who cares about that cantankerous era of Phillies baseball where one never knew what type of land mine rested just around any corner? How about this… maybe there’s something to those polls Sports Illustrated conducts?  After all, in a recent issue, the Sixers’ Andre Iguodala was voted to be amongst the NBA’s most overrated players and the Phillies’ Ruben Amaro Jr. was rated as a middle-of-the-pack general manager in Major League Baseball. Make that, second-division, actually. Ruben came in 19^th while ex-Phillies GM Ed Wade was 29^th out of 30.

Those ratings seem to be a bit off… at least for Wade. Taking his full body of work into account Ed Wade might be a vastly underrated as a big league general manager.

Really? How so? And why does it appear as if I’m talking to myself?

Here’s why Wade is underrated:

·         Hilarity

Don’t sleep on this factor. In a business where hubris and self-absorption are the norm (see: Amaro, R.) and a sense of humor is viewed as a determent, Wade’s unintentional comedy is nothing to sneeze at. Really, do you have to ask? Wade was the guy who parachuted out of a plane—a ballsy act in itself—only to get all tangled up in a tree in South Jersey. You can’t make that up, folks. Wade just hung there in a tree with a parachute strapped to his back. That’s hilarious on so many different levels. If comedians told jokes about big league GMs, Ed Wade would be like George W. Bush.

Plus, Wade has some sort of fetish (yes, it’s a fetish) with former Phillies players/employees. Now that he’s with the Houston Astros, Wade was signed and hired countless dudes he had in Philadelphia. For instance, not only did Wade trade/sign Randy Wolf, Tomas Perez, Jason Michaels, Geoff Geary, Michael Bourn, Matt Kata, Chris Coste, Mike Costanzo, Pedro Feliz, and, of course, Brett Myers, but also he took former Phillies PR man Gene Dias to the Astros with him.

With moves like this and a run-in with pitcher Shawn Chacon where Wade ended up getting choked, the Astros did the only thing they could… they gave Wade a two-year extension.

·         Patience

OK, we don’t know if this is masterful foresight or just dumb luck, but Wade should get a ton of credit for not trading minor leaguers Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Cole Hamels when he has the chance and everyone pleaded with him to do so. Remember that? Of course you don’t because you don’t want to admit how dumb you were. Still, it’s hard to believe a few folks got all lathered up because Wade refused to make deadline deals involving Howard that would have brought back guys like Jeff Suppan or Kris Benson from Pittsburgh.

With the core group of Howard, Utley and Hamels, Wade’s successors could be bold enough to do things like trade for Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay as well as sign Pedro Martinez, Greg Dobbs and Jayson Werth. In fact, it was Wade who swiped Shane Victorino away from the Dodgers in the Rule 5 draft in 2005. Sure, the Phillies eventually offered him back, but sometimes it counts to be lucky, too.

Make no mistake about it, Wade’s fingerprints are all over the Phillies’ roster. Maybe as much as Amaro’s, who has the strange honor of being one of the only GMs in the history of the game to trade and sign three Cy Young Award winners in the span of five months.

Oh yes, Amaro’s moves have been solid, considering the trades for Lee and Halladay and knowing when to cut bait on guys like Pat Burrell. However, he loses points for giving Jamie Moyer a two-year deal worth $13 million. With that money on hand, the Phillies probably would have had a rotation with both Lee and Halladay at the top and Cole Hamels, Joe Blanton and J.A. Happ filling out the other three spots.

Imagine that… Amaro got all those Cy Young Award winners, but would have had two of them in their prime at the top of his pitching rotation if he had allowed then 46-year-old Moyer to walk away.

Hindsight. It has to be a GM’s worst enemy...

Or best friend.

Using pretzel logic

When he was at Stanford, presumably on a baseball scholarship, Phillies’ general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. majored in human biology. Certainly a subject as complex as that meant hours of study and lab work that most college students never put themselves through.

And then to play baseball on top of that… hey, Ruben can retain some information. He may be a lot of things, but dumb ain’t one of them.

Hey, if you don’t believe me just ask Ruben.

“I was talking to some people the other day and I said, ‘I’m not a dummy,’” the GM said on Monday night at the Philadelphia Sports Writers Association banquet in Cherry Hill.

That wasn’t just some pre-emptive sweeping statement or a bit of braggadocio, either. It was some way for Amaro to flaunt that B.S. from Stanford that his baseball ability got him. Not in the least. It’s just that Amaro knows about all the folks forlornly kicking stones into the gutter because the Phillies traded Cliff Lee. He senses the touch of melancholy amongst the baseball die hards.To use a phrase, getting Roy Halladay, but dealing Lee is a major bummer.

But it wasn’t dumb trade because Amaro is no dummy. He wants you to know that because there was a method to his madness. He didn’t catch a case of the dumbs and trade away the pitcher with a Cy Young Award who just completed the greatest postseason ever by a Phillies pitcher.

“I know what Cliff Lee means to our rotation in addition to Halladay and [Cole] Hamels. It’s a no-brainer,” he said, talking about brains and relative dumbness again.

“Our goal is to be a contender every year,” he continued. “It’s not just to be a competitor, but to be a contender every year. That’s really my job. As an executive of the club, it’s my job to do what I can to try to maintain that level of talent on the club and that hope from the fans. So, yes, I’d like to have a championship, but not at the cost of having our organization not be good for 10 years. Absolutely not. That’s not the goal. The goal is to be a contender every year. And once you get to the World Series or get to the playoffs, it’s really a matter of who’s playing the best baseball, who’s hottest, who has the karma.”

Go ahead and pick that apart if you like. Certainly Amaro left himself open to more criticism there, but any sentence spoken by any pro sports exec is fair game for second-guessing. That’s what we do. But it’s only fair to acknowledge that Amaro has thoroughly and meticulously explained why he felt he had to trade Cliff Lee. Frankly, people with the ability to think and reason with logical and cogent points should understand that by now.

You don’t need a B.S. from Stanford or the School of Hard Knocks to figure that one out.

But that doesn’t mean we have to like it.

No, Amaro is not a dummy. We’ve established this already. But maybe he thinks you are a dummy. It kind of sounds like that when he says:

“We cannot be the New York Yankees,” he said before sitting down to dinner in Cherry Hill. “We have to have people that we can bring to the big leagues from our system. The guys who are our core players are guys from our system.”

Now some people might reason that the GM is rightly explaining how the Phillies cannot buy championships or have a payroll up to a third more than the record $140 million the team is spending on salaries in 2010. At some point, they’ll explain, low-priced rookies and up-and-comers will have to take over for potential high-priced All-Stars like Jayson Werth or Ryan Howard.

To those folks we ask, how’s that Kool-Aid taste? Is it fruity?
 

When a Phillies executive says his team cannot be like the New York Yankees and up the payroll in order to make sure guys like Werth and Howard and Utley and Rollins spend the rest of their careers in South Philly, it does not mean anything about giving the young and hungry kids a chance. Nope, all it means is that the Philadelphia Phillies L.P., are a corporation that plans to be run as a business with its eyes on the bottom line. Sure, they would all like to win championships and they have hired Amaro to be the guy to put together a championship-level team as long as he comes in under budget and maximizes profit.

It means they want to keep all that cash that hard-working people spent on tickets, shirts, concessions and parking from all those sellouts over the past three seasons is something the organization wants to keep for itself and not waste on some silly overhead like baseball players.

Surprised?

“I guess I’d characterize myself as someone who is aggressive and someone who understands what the fans want,” Amaro said. “But at the same time, I have to do right by this organization, and in turn, I think that’s doing right by the fans.”

In biology they study how form develops and grows. Mixed in there are theories of evolution, function and structure. Students of biology have a good idea of how an organism will travel from infancy to adulthood, which seems to be a perfect training ground for a future baseball general manager. Cliff Lee an organism in its complete and mature form. He was in his peak and was on target for another above-average season.

But Lee was traded for ballplayers still in development. Though baseball people have a pretty good idea of what they will be when they are ready for the big leagues, nothing is promised or guaranteed.

In other words, Amaro traded the known to Seattle for the unknown only he’s talking like it’s a given.

Does your head hurt, too?

“It’s going to be difficult to look fans in the face and say two years from now, ‘You know, why we don't have any players to supplant some of the guys we have now is because I went for it with Cliff Lee and now we have no players to fall back on,’” Amaro said. “That's not the goal.”

Sigh.

The logic makes sense. We get it. But just think about how fired up the fans in the city would be heading into spring training in two weeks with Halladay, Hamels and Lee. Go ahead and think about that for a second and then think about how uninspiring minding the bottom line really is.

Trading Cy Youngs

With all that is involved in simply signing a player to a standard baseball contract, it’s no wonder that huge, blockbuster trades don’t happen much anymore. Actually, forget about blockbuster deals, just making a trade is work enough.

That’s why the proposed blockbuster with Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee and a pile of top-ranked prospects makes one’s head hurt. There are so many moving parts, so many different contracts, so many different wants and pieces of the puzzle in which even the tiniest misstep will ruin the whole thing.

So the fact that the two teams involved (Mariners and Blue Jays) with the three way trade with the Phillies were able to keep their eyes on what was coming and going is laudable enough.

However, to make such a huge trade with two former Cy Young Award winners still in their primes in not just unheard of, but also unprecedented.

Cy Young Award winners rarely (if ever) get traded. Sure, they become free agents or essentially force a trade lest a team risk allowing the pitcher to walk away without compensation. But willingly traded after winning two games in the World Series and putting together the best postseason in franchise history?

Nope, never happens.

Until now, that is. Leave it to Ruben Amaro Jr. to pull the trigger on the biggest trade since Paul Owens dealt Rick Wise for Steve Carlton.

Amongst the Cy Youing Award winners to be traded in recent history, Lee and Halladay will join Jake Peavy, Roger Clemens, Johan Santana, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and Greg Maddux as pitchers to be traded after they won the big award. There are others too. Tom Seaver and Fergie Jenkins were involved in a bunch of trades after great seasons.

Of course this doesn’t include all the great pitchers who were released and/or granted free agency late in their careers. Around here, we certainly remember how Carlton bounced from the Giants to the Indians and Twins after the Phillies released him in 1986.

But as far as Cy Young Award winner traded for another Cy Young Award winner, it’s happened one time and that was long before either pitcher had established himself as a big league pitcher.

Moreover, if it happens again in the Lee and Halladay deal, one of the guys will hold the odd distinction of being the only Cy Young Award winner to be traded for another Cy Young Award winner twice.

In June of 2002 and still pitching for the Expos’ Double-A club Harrisburg, Lee was traded to the Indians for Bartolo Colon. Actually, the Expos gave up Lee, Brandon Phillips and Grady Sizemore for Colon and Tim Drew.

With the luxury of hindsight that trade looks horrible. Making it look worse is that the Expos traded Colon during the off season to the White Sox for Orlando Hernandez, Rocky Biddle and Jeff Liefer. Two years after that, Colon went 21-8 for the Angels to win the 2005 Cy Young Award.

With the 2008 American League Cy Young Award in his trophy case, Lee is likely on the move again—this time for the 2003 American League Cy Young Award winner.

So what’s this say about Lee that in two of the three trades he’s been a part of, the other piece to the deal is a Cy Young Award winner?

Cliff Lee's lasting legacy

Sometimes it doesn’t take long for a ballplayer to create a lasting legacy. Other times it takes just one game. For instance, Don Larsen scuffled around the Majors for 14 seasons, lost way more than he won, but one October afternoon in 1956 he became one of the most famous ballplayers ever.

All he had to do was pitch a perfect game in the World Series.

Cliff Lee did not pitch a perfect game in the World Series for the Phillies, but then again he didn’t have to. If his career with the Phillies lasts just those 12 starts in the regular season and five more in the playoffs, he already has left an undeliable mark on the franchise.

There were those first brilliant five starts after the trade from Cleveland that painted images of another parade down Broad Street bookended with the five extraordinary starts in the playoffs that lifted Lee shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the great postseason pitchers of all time.

The first five starts after the trade, Lee piled up 40 innings, a 5-0 record, with 39 strikeouts, and a 0.68 ERA. In the five starts in the playoffs Lee went 4-0 with a 1.56 ERA in 40 1/3 innings.

It was two of those outings that stood out the most. The first one was the 11-0 shutout against the Dodgers in Game 3 of the NLCS. According to the stat formula called “Game Score” devised by guru Bill James, Lee’s eight innings where he allowed three hits without a walk to go with 10 strikeouts and no runs on 114 pitches, was the best postseason game ever pitched by a Phillie. Moreover, according to Game Score only 45 playoff outings since 1903 rated higher than Lee’s effort in Game 3.

Though the statistical metrics don’t register it as such, Lee’s effort in Game 1 of the World Series was more impressive than the NLCS game against the Dodgers. Not only should Lee’s Game 1 outing go down not only as an all-timer in Phillies lore, but also as one of the great Game 1 performances in World Series history. Truly, the list of superlatives from the game is pretty impressive. Actually, my favorite of the bunch was that Cliff Lee was the first pitcher to strike out 10 hitters without a walk in Game 1 of the World Series since Deacon Phillippe of the Pirates beat Cy Young (the man himself) in the very first World Series game ever played.

In other words, Lee did something in Game 1 that was done just once and it was 105 years ago.

Just to top it off Lee got an single, pitched all nine innings, and made a flat-footed basket catch on a popup back to the mound that only would have been more quirky if he had caught it with his cap. Plus, Lee not only was the winning pitcher in the first regular-season game at the new Yankee Stadium, but he also won the first ever World Series game played in the new park.

Pretty amazing.

Better yet, Lee dared you to take your eyes off him. Even when he took the mound he had a unique ritual where he mimed a pitch into centerfield, he ran on and off the field and he worked very, very quickly. Lee caught it, threw it and then dashed off the mound.

After games he didn’t treat his arm with ice like most pitchers. Even after a career-high 272 innings pitched (counting the playoffs), Lee never strapped his arm in an ice pack after a game. In 16 of his 39 starts Lee pitched into the eighth inning. He averaged 104 pitches per start and hardly walked anyone.

In other words, Lee was a legit ace for a team that went to the World Series for the past two seasons.

But there is the matter of those seven starts wedged between the first five and last five where the innings and pitches seemed to catch up with the lefty. Even with a shutout against Washington mixed in, Lee posted an ERA over 6 during that stretch.

As they say, though, it’s how you finish that everyone remembers the most. With that in mind Lee finished the season better than any other pitcher in team history.

*
Obviously, if Lee goes in order to make room for Roy Halladay, the pressure is squarely on Cole Hamels’ shoulders. Perhaps if Lee and Halladay could have been teammates in Philadelphia, Hamels could fit in nicely as the No. 3 starter behind the two aces.

Imagine that: Halladay, Lee, Hamels, Blanton and Happ?

Still, Hamels needs to deliver in 2010. Obviously the Phillies are counting on him.