Cliff Lee To Phillies Again?

Headline on Foxsports.com, July 3, 2010

You have to give Ruben Amaro, Jr. credit. It takes big balls to go after a guy you just traded less than a year ago. Actually, its more than just Amaro's trade of Lee. Its that he traded Lee for pennies on the dollar while getting nothing that will benefit the major league club for years in return, a club that, you may recall, is trying to win the National League for a third straight year.

Either that or he's a stone cold idiot, but I'm going to go with the big balls thing for now.

Ken Rosenthal's report today that the Phillies are interested in trading for Cliff Lee again is an accidental admission that Amaro screwed up this past off season when he traded Lee in the first place.

Here's what I wrote about the Lee trade about a week or so after it happened:

[E]ither Amaro had no plan and grabbing Halladay which prompted getting rid of Lee was a seat-of-the-pants maneuver, or he screwed up. A team trying to win now with the collection of talent the Phillies have on the field at the peak of their physical abilities almost never makes trades like the Lee trade.

I shouldn't have said "almost" in that last sentence.

Anyway, here's why you don't trade Cliff Lee: the Phillies pitching this season without Lee (and with Halladay) has actually been better (slightly) as a staff than they were last season. Impressive, right? Here's the problem: the Phillies offense has been markedly worse. Last season the Phillies scored 5.1 runs per game, this season its down to 4.7. The former is a pace for 826 runs, good for a National League team. The latter is a pace for 761, mediocre for a National League team, and with the injuries the Phillies are going through now the likelihood is that that number drops further.

So why does that prove that the Phils should've kept Lee? To put it into cliche, because you never know. Trading Cliff Lee for three minor leaguers was akin to saying the Phillies had enough to win the division and, I suppose, the World Series without him.

Now that that is proving to be wrong, Amaro is back on the Lee hunt again. I guess it speaks well of Amaro that he is willing to put aside his pride to do what's right for the team. Maybe more importantly, it speaks badly of him that he has to do that at all.

If the Phillies do end up acquiring Lee, they'll almost surely do so at the expense of more than they received for trading him last winter. At which point Amaro will have cost himself not only prospects and money but games in the standings.

If he isn't successful in trading for Lee, Amaro better hope it isn't a team in direct competition with him that gets him. That could cost him even more than money, prospects or games, it could cost him his job.
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