Welp, Here You Go.
Finally Steve Phillips solves all of our Cleveland Indians problems from the comfort of his den.
over 1 year ago
hans
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1 Couldn’t he have just written it as I can’t watch him?
2 Given his predilections, how can you be so sure that that is
hisden.
I kept expecting an intern to run through the shot.
by JulioBernazard on Nov 24, 2010 5:20 PM EST up reply actions
Justin Masterson to the bullpen. Gee thats original.
"Ok everyone listen up! I've just invited Dave to suck it!"
Sure, Phillips is often ridiculous. But I made my peace with him after thinking he was the worst sort of junk analyst for this quote back in 2006. Mea Culpa, Steve!
by Bogalusa Bomber on Nov 25, 2010 7:08 AM EST reply actions
You know BB I think that little piece says more about the Fire Joe Morgan bunch than it does the BBTN guys.
Our best players wear suits.
Maybe so, but can’t say I disagreed with them in their assessment at the time. I think mostly he’s a bag full of cliches. But he saw the magic in Cliff.
by Bogalusa Bomber on Nov 27, 2010 10:24 PM EST up reply actions
The Fire Joe Morgan guys are a bunch of self-anointed baseball experts who write like they know what they’re talking about – and don’t – while endlessly assailing guys that at least have a clue.
All the FJM boyz know about baseball is they can’t play it.
Our best players wear suits.
When the guy who at least has a clue seemingly uses pitcher win percentage, and just about nothing else, I don’t see why its wrong to rip him. Cliff Lee was near the bottom of the league in ‘getting ground balls’ and while his 6.37 k/9 was pretty good, it wasn’t ‘best in the game’ good. He got asked who the best lefty in the game was, as of the beginning of the 06 season, and demonstrably, and with incredibly poor reasoning, picked the wrong answer. If he got asked who could be the best lefty in the game in the near future, and he picked Cliff Lee, saying something like “He has the stuff, but just hasn’t put it all together yet”, he wouldn’t be on FJM.
When do you write your big opus about how the Indians and their high-falutin’ sabermetrics were right about Cliff Lee all along?
Right about trading for him?
Right in the way he was developed?
Right to give him a four-year contract extension in the middle of a totally mediocre season, immediately after he’d reeled off seven non-quality starts in a row?
Right in the way he was eventually rehabbed and coached, going from a fringe also-ran to a Cy Young winner?
Right to unload him because (as I know you’ll agree) we couldn’t afford to keep him?
Where is this essay? I have been waiting for it for years now!
You know of course that I have a job.
And Jay, I know you wrote this in a big hurry but isn’t right about trading him and right to unload him one and the same questions? And right in the way he was developed and coached are pretty close too. So when you eliminate the redundancies you’re left with "where exactly did the Tribe FO screw up with Cliff Lee?" That’s a better question, since picking him up along with Sizemore as add-ins in the Colon trade was genius – no doubt. And sending him down in 2007 was the right move too. But here’s where Shapiro etal missed the boat. They had five FA’s in waiting, Hafner, Sabathia, Lee, Martinez and Westbrook. They had room inside their salary structure to sign no more than two. Signing Sabathia was out of the question so it left them to chose two of the remaining four and they picked the wrong two.
We agonize over the multiplicity of mini-moves the Tribe FO makes – who are the 39th and 40th guys to leave on the roster? Which of the marginal IF’s to keep as a utility infielder? Who’s the seventh reliever? But these are not the decisions that make or break a team. Who to spend your limited resources on is the kind of choice that makes or breaks the future of the franchise. The Indians FO has to be flawless when it comes to these decisions, and clearly they are not.
Our best players wear suits.
isn’t right about trading him and right to unload him one and the same questions?
The first one isn’t right about “trading him,” it’s right about “trading for him.”
Your hindsight is less than 20/20. There was much discussion in many circles about the Tribe’s “big three” looming free agents, and Lee was not one of them. Nobody ever talked about a “big four,” including you, in part because the time frame was totally different. Westbrook was eligible for free agency after 2007, Hafner and Sabathia after 2008.
Lee wasn’t eligible until after 2010, and by the time the appropriate moment arrived to talk extension, it was time to trade him and rebuild. There was no point at which it would have been appropriate to talk extension when we were still expecting to contend. You could argue for a pre-2009 extension, but was Lee going to settle for two years tacked on to the existing two years, as Sabathia had in early 2005? Seems unlikely to me. Pre-2005 Sabathia, after all, really was not in the same league as pre-2009 Lee.
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