FanPost

Looking Back at the Cliff Lee Trade

Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports

When the Indians dealt Justin Masterson and Asdrubal Cabrera at the trade deadline this year, and reaction was pouring into the comments here at LGT, I found myself wondering how the community reacted to other big trades, and set out to find the posts that would have such reactions.

In Part I of this series, I covered reaction to the CC Sabathia trade.

It is now time to move forward a year. In 2009 the Tribe were busy authoring another disappointing season and had traded away Mark DeRosa, Rafael Betancourt and Ryan Garko, but bigger moves were on the way. Today I'll look back at the first of those bigger moves.

July 29, 2009

The Indians have traded Cliff Lee and Ben Francisco to the Phillies for Carlos Carrasco, Lou Marson, Jason Donald and Jason Knapp.

First up I went here which, to be honest, is well worth a read all on its own. Jay's prescient analysis at the time ("Indians fans are mad as hell, but why aren't they mad as hell at the system?") rings just as true today as it did then, and reminded me of why I started coming to LGT in the first place.

As before, no names are attributed to each line. I've tried to grab a cross section of responses highlighting the general feel of the time. Clearly, our perspective on these trades is much changed five years down the line, but my summary at the bottom will be solely around the visceral, immediate reaction to the trade :

  • "The primes of Lee, Sabathia, Westbrook, Hafner, 1/2 of Sizemore, Peralta, and most outrageously Martinez have been wasted thanks to the last 5 years of Wedge. Hey, you can probably make a better argument for wasting B. Phillips also. Again, this comment is cleveland.com-ish, but I get emotional thinking about how disgusting this has turned out."
  • "Maybe not what we've come to expect from previous years, (perhaps when prospects and players under salary control were not valued as they are today), but this is a nice little haul. the position players didn't look like much to me at first, but look better after a closer look at the stats"
  • "I had just made peace with this trade. I was still on shaky ground. I really have come around in a huge way since the news broke."
  • "My only small qualm is that I always kinda like having guys who are widely liked, only because they're easier to re-trade if need be. We're kinda stuck with these underrated guys."
  • "I too don't quite get Marson's inclusion with the seem overload of catchers (pending another deal) and Donald just seems underwhelming to me. Knapp, it's a departure from previous deals, it's high risk/high reward, and I'm all for it."
  • "Maybe we Indians fans overvalued Lee a tad. The Phillies were not in a position where they HAD to get an elite pitcher like the Brewers were last year. Lee doesn't have the track record that CC has nor the stuff. So comparing deals from year to year (like people always try to do with the Colon deal) is pretty naive."
  • "LGT community, just like communities elsewhere, overvalues its own talent. A way smarter group of people here, but still emotionally committed to the Indians."
  • "We're going to be the deepest system in baseball, and I don't think it's even going to be an argument. In two years, Twins fans will be bitching about OUR young pitching. And that's no hollow victory. See: Tampa Bay."
  • "I still don't like this trade, rationally or otherwise."

Thereafter, due to one of those LGT avi bets, followed a veritable plethora of Twilight related posts. I use the word plethora because it's surely better to be thinking about The Three Amigos than Twilight.

After that initial thread, I went to the official transaction discussion here. It was actually quite hard to really find much chat about the trade at all here, as the site seemed to be rather avoiding the subject. Eventually though, some more thoughts began to emerge:

  • "I'm really looking forward to getting my head around the organizational depth. If we add another piece or two for Vic, we are looking at an elite system, I think."
  • "I'm just obviously perplexed by the inclusion of Marson, though I have no doubt they have reasons. I just wonder what they are."
  • "I just there's some dittoheading going around about not getting one of the "big position prospects" from the Phillies. Brown and Taylor both seem fine but I think there's an equally strong argument to be made for Marson."
  • "At first I was steamed with this trade. Not because we traded Lee, but because the haul didn't really make sense. It still doesn't. I like Carrasco and Knapp, but Donald and Marson aren't really organizational needs. I could see flipping them, but even then with the teams economy in mind it's not going to be for veteran help to push this team over in case of contention until at least 2011."
  • "I personally love this deal. xxxx, I think you´re underrating Carrasco a fair bit. He´s a very good to excellent prospect and could without a doubt become a core player quite easily."
  • "No one at this time can tell if we got good value, this is what our FO does best, so lets hope we did."
  • "I don't quite understand the level of disappointment. Disappointed I can understand (although I think I am on the wait and see fence), but THIS IS THE WORST TRADE EVER I don't understand"
  • "This trade might be decent but I don't see anything in there that blows me away"

LGT Reaction in Summary

Having had the benefit of reading this twice I actually think there was a bit of an undercurrent at LGT that we didn't really understand this trade. Not the necessity of the act, but the actual deal itself. When Sabathia left there was barely a dissenting voice against Matt LaPorta. He was a consensus blue chipper who was widely regarded everywhere, and he alone was deemed a great return.

I think the doubt was caused because this deal didn't have that obvious centrepiece, and therefore we were left scratching our heads a little at the composition of the trade. Marson seemed superfluous with Santana on the way, Donald just didn't jump off the page as an everyday Major Leaguer and as we were all just getting on board with TINSTAAPP, it is noticeable that Knapp was barely discussed at all. Only Carrasco was really an obvious and widely regarded prospect.

All of that may be me putting a revisionist slant on the deal, but it's just something that now jumps out at me as I read it all back. However, despite the lack of obvious enthusiasm what is also noticeable is how willing we all were to put our faith in Shapiro.

This was his area. Sure we couldn't draft and developing our own players seemed to be a problem but when it came to identifying gems in other people's systems then the Tribe were past masters. The Sabathia trade still looked good, and when in doubt the Colon trade remained the gold standard for mid season retooling, so there was a lot of faith in Shapiro and a willingness to trust his judgement.

Sitting here now, two days after Carrasco pitched 5 scoreless in Yankee Stadium, I don't think we can say definitively that the trade was a complete disaster for the Indians, but with none of the other players in the Majors, this trade certainly didn't give the Indians the depth that we were all hoping for.

I would describe the overall response at the time as muted, more than a little depressed and somewhat shell shocked.

FanPosts are reader-generated, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Covering the Corner or the Covering the Corner staff.