Let me get this straight. The Philadelphia Phillies have just done what they could have done a year ago but opted not to do. Did it take them that year to realize they made a mistake when they traded Cliff Lee to Seattle last Dec. 16? Plenty of people told them that. I even wrote it a time or two or six.
Ruben Amaro Jr., the Phillies’ general manager, addressed the controversial issue Dec. 15 at the news conference at Citizens Bank Park where the Phillies re-introduced Lee to the city and the team’s fans. They had already introduced him last July when they acquired him in a trade with Cleveland.
There should have been no need to re-introduce Lee this week. The Phillies should have kept him even as they traded for Roy Halladay. But he was a season from free agency, and the Phillies didn’t think they would be able to sign him so they traded him to Seattle.
At the time of the trade Amaro talked about the importance of restocking the minor league system, which they had plundered to get Halladay. But Amaro’s explanation made no sense. The Phillies could have had Halladay, Lee and Cole Hamels in their starting rotation and been in a strong position to get to a third straight World Series. And they cared more about their minor leagues?
“There’s a deep story behind that one,” Pat Gillick said. Gillick preceded Amaro as the team’s general manager and now serves as a senior adviser
“He did the right thing,” the newly elected Hall of Famer said by telephone from his home in Seattle. “I hear where you’re coming from. The thing to do was have Halladay and Lee; that’s what the fans would have liked. But there were some circumstances there. He made the right move. Now he’s come back.”
Gillick declined to explain the circumstances he referred to, and neither Amaro nor Dave Montgomery, the Phillies’ president and chief executive officer, returned telephone calls seeking comment.
At the news conference, however Amaro said, “Frankly, did I want to move him? No. But I’m certainly pleased we had the opportunity to get him back.”
The popular belief was the Phillies didn’t want to pay Lee what he would have wanted to sign an extension. They had already negotiated an extension (3 years, $60 million) with Halladay. Amaro denied a year ago that was the reason and denied it again a year later.
“I guess people continue to feel that the reason why we traded him was because of a money issue,” Amaro said. “It was not. We did have a preliminary discussion prior to Cliff being moved. At that time, at the very least, we didn’t feel we were comfortable we were going to be able to keep him. That was a very short lived piece of the deal.”
Had the Phillies retained Lee instead of trading him, we can only speculate about what might have happened. For one thing, it is unlikely that the Phillies would have traded for Roy Oswalt, who won 7 of 8 decisions in 13 starts and 1 relief appearance.
Oswalt didn’t match the 4-0 record and 1.56 e.r.a. Lee had in 5 starts for the Phillies in the 2009 post-season, but he split two decisions with a 1.84 e.r.a. in two starts in the league championship series.
The Phillies, of course, could not have known when they traded Lee a year ago that they would be able to sign him as a free agent. Three years ago the Yankees passed up the chance to trade for Johan Santana because, they said, they preferred to wait a year and sign CC Sabathia as a free agent. The Yankees, though, could have been more confident of being able to sign Sabathia because they knew they could outbid any team for his services.
That is, they could have been confident before they were unable to sign Lee this year. Instead of signing with the Yankees, Lee seemed to use them to drive up the price for the Phillies.
As soon as the Yankees offered Lee $23 million a year for 6 years ($138 million) or $22 million a year for 6 years with a player option for a 7th year at $16 million ($148 million), he went to the Phillies, told them they were the team he really wanted to pitch for and accepted their 5-year, $120 million offer.
Lee’s signing sent the Phillies’ payroll to $175 million, the highest it’s ever been. The Phillies’ payroll, in fact, has taken an interesting path upward.
I used to think of the Phillies as a big-market team masquerading as a small-market team. Playing in one of the largest cities in the country, they paid their players as if they were in one of the smallest cities.
In my files I have club payrolls from 1992 to the present. Until 2003, the Phillies’ payroll was in the lower half of major league payrolls every year. In 2003, the last of their 33 years at Veterans Stadium, the Phillies crept into the upper half at 14th with a $70 million payroll.
“They told Scott Rolen before they traded him to St. Louis” in 2002, Gillick said, “as soon as they could move out of the Vet and go into the new park they would increase the payroll. They were going to generate more revenue at the new park.”
In 2004, their first season at Citizens Bank Park, the Phillies increased their payroll by a third, to $93 million, which was fifth highest in the majors. Now, seven years later, they will be No. 2 behind the Yankees, and they will very likely have to pay a small luxury tax with their luxury-tax payroll (based on average annual value of contracts) exceeding the $178 million threshold.
The Phillies have never paid the luxury tax, but then they have never had a starting pitching rotation of the likes of Halladay, Lee, Oswalt and Hamels.
“I don’t know if there’s a more important element of the game,” Amaro said at the news conference, referring to starting pitching. “We felt if we were going to be stable in one area, try to work around that, that starting pitching would be the thing. I think we put ourselves in a position to have as good a rotation as there is in the game. So for our long term success at the major league level, we felt like this was the right thing to do.”
Why Amaro didn’t feel that way a year ago he didn’t say. If he had felt that way and acted on that feeling, the Phillies might have played in their third successive World Series.
But they are expected to be back there in October, and the oddsmakers have made them the favorite to win. As soon as the Phillies signed Lee, one such outfit revised its list of odds.
Before the Lee signing, the Yankees were a 4-1 favorite to win the World Series with the Phillies next at 6-1. After the signing, the Phillies became the favorite at 7-2.
The city of Philadelphia is Lee’s favorite. He made that clear when he explained why he chose the Phillies and their less lucrative offer. W. C. Fields would never have understood it.
The comic actor was born in Philadelphia but made a career out of making jokes about the city. He infamously suggested his epitaph: “Here lies W. C. Fields. I would rather be living in Philadelphia.” That’s what Lee decided, but he meant it.