Tag: bartolo colon

Overlooked When He Arrived, Cliff Lee Wound Up An Ace

When GM Mark Shapiro decided to deal Bartolo Colon to the Montreal Expos in the middle of the 2002 season, he had a quick rebuild on his mind.

That’s why the top target in the deal was infielder Brandon Phillips, the Expos’ top prospect, who was also the #20 minor league prospect in all of professional baseball.

He also got Grady Sizemore, who was Montreal’s third best minor leaguer.

That’s a good start, right?  But Shapiro also got a left-handed pitcher who wasn’t ranked in the Expos’ top ten, but was 7-2 with a 3.23 ERA at Class AA Harrisburg, who coincidentally played in the same league as the Tribe’s AA affiliate in Akron.

You can make a pretty good argument that the pitcher became the best player in the deal.  That southpaw was Cliff Lee.

Lee made three starts with Akron, before the Tribe bumped him up to AAA Buffalo for eight starts (3-2, 3.77 ERA) at age 23, before making his major league debut against the Twins on September 15th in a 5-0 loss.  Lee pitched 5-1/3 innings allowing one run on two hits.

The lefty started the following year in AAA, going 6-1 with a 3.27 ERA before getting called up for good (he made a spot start on June 30th) on August 16th.  He made nine starts in total, finishing at 3-3 with a 3.61 ERA and 44 strikeouts in 52.1 innings.

Lee opened 2004 in the rotation, and started well, going 7-1 with a 3.86 ERA through June, and was 10-1 with a 3.81 ERA when he beat Seattle on July 16th.  He ran out of gas at that point, going 4-7 with a whopping 8.90 ERA over the rest of the season.

He finished at 14-8 and a 5.43 ERA with 161 strikeouts in 179 frames.

He was one of the Indians’ anchors to a pitching staff that just missed the post-season in 2005, going 18-5 with a 3.79 ERA, becoming more of a pitch to contact guy, his strikeout rate dropped from 8.1 to 6.4, but his walk rate also fell from 4.1 to 2.3 (both per nine innings)

Lee took a step backwards in ’06, going 14-11 and his ERA rose to 4.40, but finished strong with a 4-1 September, cementing him as a fixture for the following season.

One of the great regrets of the 2007 Central Division winning season, is the failure of Cliff Lee to be Cliff Lee.  Think about if Eric Wedge had the Lee of 2005 to add to the Cy Young Award winning C.C. Sabathia and Fausto Carmona (19-8, 3.06 ERA).

We might be talking about what a great parade fans experienced following that season.

The southpaw never got it going that year, going 5-8 with a 6.29 ERA and was left off the post-season roster.  He didn’t make a start after July 26th, and was sent to AAA for the month of August.

Lee roared back in 2008, allowing just one run in his first four starts, and ended May at 8-1 with a 1.88 ERA, in route to winning his own Cy Young, with a 22-3, 2.84 ERA.  He led the AL in wins, ERA, shutouts, ERA+, Fielding Independent Pitching, home runs/9 innings and walks per 9 innings.

The Indians got off to a slow start in ’09 after trading Sabathia the year before, and Lee entered the All Star break at 4-9, but with a 3.47 ERA.  Unfortunately, the Indians were sitting in last place with a 35-54 record, and Shapiro pulled the trigger on moves involving cornerstones Victor Martinez, and Lee.

Both players were not eligible for free agency until after the 2010 season, meaning the GM punted on the following season.

Martinez brought Justin Masterson, Nick Hagadone, and Brian Price (only Masterson had any success in Cleveland), while Lee brought Jason Knapp, Lou Marson, Jason Donald, and a young right-hander named Carlos Carrasco from Philadelphia.

It took until 2014, five years later, before the Tribe saw a real return when Carrasco became one of the AL’s best pitchers after elbow surgery.

Lee pitched in the World Series later that year for the Phillies (they lost to New York), although he pitched well winning his two starts.

An impending free agent, Lee was dealt to Seattle over the winter, and was moved to Texas at the deadline, again pitching in the Fall Classic, but this time he went 0-2 as the Rangers lost to San Francisco.

He signed back with the Phillies as a free agent and had an excellent 2011 season (17-8, 2.40 ERA) and went 37-25 in his first three years with the Phils.

But the weight of eight 200 innings pitched years in a nine year span took their toll on his elbow and he finished his career in 2014 with a 4-5, 3.65 ERA in just 81 innings.

Cliff Lee’s career record in the bigs is 143-91, with 83 of those wins coming in a Cleveland Indians uniform.

He was kind of an afterthought when the Colon trade was made, but he might have been the best return.

MW

 

 

 

Tribe Needs to Start Over on Mound

When Larry Dolan bought the Cleveland Indians, he and his new GM Mark Shapiro made a statement that would change the direction of the franchise.

They were going to build the team around pitching.

How’s that working out for them?

In the last 11 seasons that Shapiro has run the organization, the Tribe has had a few dominant starting pitchers, including three Cy Young Award winners, two won with the Indians (C.C. Sabathia in 2007 and Cliff Lee in 2008), and one elsewhere (Bartolo Colon in 2005).

Since the trades of Sabathia and Lee for little return (that’s a subject for another day), the Tribe has struggled to find effective starting pitching.

A good way to find an effective starter is to look at his hits to innings pitched ratio and his strikeout to walk ratio.  If they’ve allowed fewer hits than innings and struck out twice as many as they’ve walked, then they are good pitchers.

Since trading Lee in 2009, Cleveland has had just two pitchers accomplish this feat, both last season.  They would be Justin Masterson and Josh Tomlin.

So, looking at 15 regular starters (five per year for three years), only two hurlers can be viewed as being solid starters.

Keep in mind that Tim Belcher was the Tribe pitching coach in 2011.

So, the Indians don’t have any pitchers that can throw strikes, and they don’t have anyone with good enough stuff to overcome that.

Going forward, would you blame the front office is they cleared the decks and brought it five new starting pitchers?

Masterson looks to have good stuff, and may be worth salvaging, but does he have the mental toughness to be a starter on a good team?  Certainly his joking with Tigers’ slugger Miguel Cabrera after allowing a home run to him has to raise some eyebrows in the front office.

As for Ubaldo Jimenez, he’s another who doesn’t appear to be mentally tough enough to be a starter on a contender.  Perhaps it is because his mechanics are a mess, so he’s lost confidence, but it’s tough to imagine putting him out on the mound 35 times next season.

Zack McAllister throws hard and for the most part is around the strike zone.  He’s probably the only starter who should be in next year’s rotation for sure.

Carlos Carrasco also has a leg up if he’s healthy.  Remember, he had a very good run last season before his elbow started to hurt, going 4-2 with a 1.90 ERA in June.

The sinker ball theory this organization has trotted out in recent years leaves too much room for error.  Groundballs find holes, and if mixed with walks, allow runs to score.

If you make your living getting guys to hit the ball on the ground, you must have good control.

It’s another failed experiment for the Indians.

Shapiro and GM Chris Antonetti seem to run the Tribe as a 7th grade science project, trying different things that may cost less money and still allow the team to win.

You have to get pitchers who can strike people out.  That’s a tried and true way to win baseball games.

Sure, you can have a sinkerball/control type pitcher who can win, but name pitchers like that who are good on a consistent basis.

Whether they get them in trades, or develop them in the draft, the pitching isn’t going to get better unless the front office gets some guys with swing and miss stuff.

Guys like Colon, Sabathia, and Lee.

It’s another case of the Indians’ organization selling the fans a bunch of fertilizer.

MW