As Cliff Lee Signs, Phillies Are the Targets Now

Dec 14, 2010

It is going to take a while to think about the Phillies as the overlords of baseball, the team that can outspend and outrecruit all of the others.

But that day is here. With their midnight strike to acquire Cliff Lee, the Phillies have assembled a pitching staff — Cole Hamels as No. 4? — that really should win the World Series come late October. Anything less will be failure.

Yankees fans, who must wonder if New York bumptiousness in management and in the stands turned off Lee and his wife, always embrace the awesome responsibility of front-runner. Now Phillies fans will learn to live with it.

Remember when Phillies fans had a surly underdog mentality every time the Mets and their raffish fans came to town and took over their ballpark? Ha! That era is long gone, on both sides.

The Phillies have assembled one of the great pitching staffs in history, just going by the credentials of (might as well use alphabetical order and let the manager work out a rotation) Roy Halladay, Hamels, Lee and Roy Oswalt.

This staff is competing with the great Atlanta staff of the past generation, the Cleveland staff of the mid-1950s and the Los Angeles Dodgers staff of the ’60s, and some Yankees staffs of various ages.

As a sobering observation, Giants fans could remind people that the Phillies were not even in the World Series this year. The Giants were a delightful surprise put together late in the season, and they deserved their championship, but that is ancient history now that the Phillies have parlayed attendance, cable and other income to snatch Lee from the Yankees and the Rangers.

The Phillies should win next season, which is the only season that matters, even though the Phillies signed Lee for five years. In a nation racked by unemployment and debate over how to recover, these offers all sound like funny money. The Yankees were apparently offering a seven-year contract while the Phillies swooped in with a front-ended five-year contract for a pitcher who will turn 33 in August.

The Yankees, who had dreamed of throwing C. C. Sabathia and Lee as twin aces, always expect to get their man. Big Bronx bucks are almost always enough to bring anybody to the Bronx. Some of them thrive — Mark Teixeira, Sabathia, Hideki Matsui, David Cone, Paul O’Neill, and even Alex Rodriguez, in his diva way. But there is a whole history of players who have not thrived in New York, for one reason or another: Johnson, Brown, Pavano. It’s not for everybody. And presumably not for Cliff Lee from Arkansas.

Everybody will play down the incident in the American League Championship Series when a lout or three accosted Lee’s wife among the travel party of the Texas Rangers. Lee assured everybody it was not an issue, which does not mean they forgot about it. They could have used the Yankees to raise the tide to float his humble little skiff to Philadelphia.

It is even possible Lee observed the way the Yankees management whacked away at their captain — No. 2, Derek Jee-tah! — with leaked challenges to go look elsewhere as a free agent. That gibe did not sound like Brian Cashman but rather somebody higher up in the Yankees hierarchy, channeling the Boss, saying that a real general manager does not let the help be too demanding.

Lee could not have missed Jeter’s sizzle when he finally reupped, saying in very un-Jeterian tones that he did not appreciate the snide comments in public. Since the intrusive news media is a given, Jeter could only have been talking about management.

Now the Yankees must pick through the leavings at the end of the free-agent season. It’s just like holiday shopping. But they have as much as $20 million a season to play with and they will think of something. Frankly, this setback will be good for Yankees players and fans, force them to be creative, see how the other side feels. All eyes are on the Phillies now.

A note of reality: signing an established superstar pitcher is tricky because the allure is his body of work.

In the past decade, the Mets have subsidized superb competitors for great work done elsewhere. This is known as the Petey Syndrome, after Pedro Martinez, who went downhill after a honeymoon, as did Johan Santana and Frankie Rodriguez.

The Phillies surely noticed that Lee did not exactly dominate the World Series, with two starts, two losses, 11 2/3 innings and a 6.94 earned run average. The postseason will chew up pitchers. Now Major League Baseball is threatening to expand its playoffs.

Lee should be fine for a few years. But five? It’s a different sport, but the Islanders fell apart collectively after winning four straight Stanley Cups (and playing in a fifth final) because they had essentially skated an entire extra season. Intensity adds up, particularly in the arm of a pitcher.

Lee pitched for four different teams in the past two seasons and maybe he was tired of orienting himself, learning new player parking lots and new gate attendants and new routes to new ballparks.

He had a trial run with the Phillies at the end of 2009 — he did not get a ring — and chose the Phillies over the Yankees as the best way to get one. He chose chesty Jimmy Rollins and the rest of that confident band. Phillies fans should now study the traditional presumptiveness of Yankees fans. As of now, the Phillies should never lose a game in 2011. That’s how it works.

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