On July 29, 2009, I was busy spending my 2nd straight day in a gigantic auditorium in Tampa, Florida taking a test. No phone, no tv, no contact with the outside world at all. To make matters worse, when the test ended at 4pm I had to immediately grab my things from a locker and get to the airport to make a 6pm flight to Philadelphia for another day of testing. I didn’t care about any of that. As I ran out the front door to a thankfully waiting cab I fumbled with my phone for any Phillies trade deadline news. Cliff Lee was coming to Philadelphia!!!
After the Phillies won the World Series in 2008 with a less than stellar pitching staff, their dreams of repeating were slowed by Cole Hamels never getting back on track. The Phillies had all the hitting in the world with a championship core of MVP candidates but they desperately needed an ace. New Phillies GM Ruben Amaro Jr. knew he needed to make a splash.
Clifton Phiffer Lee was the reigning Cy Young winner in the American League for Cleveland after an out-of-nowhere season. He went 22-3 with a 2.54 ERA. Now in the 2009 season, despite blowing up on Opening Day, Cliff was doing his Cliff thing and ho-humming his way to a 3.14 ERA and 3 complete games for a nothing Cleveland team. He was a prime moving target.
So was Roy Halladay of the Toronto Blue Jays. After finishing runner up to Lee in the 2008 Cy Young voting, Halladay saw that he wasn’t going to compete for a championship with the Blue Jays. He didn’t demand a trade, but he was open to it. He wanted to be a Phillie. Speculation for the last month had been that the Phillies were going to get their ace of aces too. In fact, that’s why I was so crazy running out of the Tampa Convention Center, I thought Roy Halladay was going to be the move. It didn’t happen.
Instead, the move was Cliff Lee (and Ben Francisco). Going to Cleveland in the deal was Carlos Carrasco, Jason Knapp, Jason Donald, and Lou Marson. It’s safe to say that none of these moves came back to haunt the team.
- Carrasco had been the Phillies top prospect for years, but they were reluctant to bring him up. He made his debut with Cleveland shortly after the trade but was lit up. Carrasco finally broke out at 27 and had a few solid years. He was still pitching as recently as earlier this season for the Yankees
- Jason Knapp was the real intriguing figure in the deal. The recent draft pick could hit 100 and was seen as a possible ace in the future. Unfortunately, he blew out his arm and never reached the majors
- My friends still make fun of me for thinking Lou Marson was our catcher of the future. All he did was hit in the minors and I had visions of a catcher with a batting title and a screaming high OBP. It didn’t work that way in the majors. Marson was a backup catcher in the majors for a couple of years but never panned out.
- Jason Donald fit the mold of the scrappy white infielder that everyone dubs the next Chase Utley as soon as they see him in a uniform. No one is Chase Utley. Donald’s most memorable moment as a big leaguer is being the guy who was mistakenly called safe with 2 outs in the 9th, breaking up Armando Galarraga’s bid for a perfect game.
As for Cliff Lee, I’d say he ingratiated himself nicely to the city. In his first game two days later, Lee gave up 1 run in a complete game win against the Giants. In the next start it was 1 run in 7 innings against the Rockies, then 1 run in 8 innings against the Cubs, none earned in another complete game against the Diamondbacks, then 7 shutout innings against the Mets. That’s 3 earned runs in his first 40 innings with the Phillies, all wins.
He had a couple rough starts towards the end, but he was brought in for the playoffs, and he did not disappoint. In his 5 playoff games, the Phillies won all 5 games:
- NLDS Game 1 against Colorado – 9 IP, 1 ER, 5 Ks
- NLDS Game 4 in Colorado – 7 IP, 1 ER, 5 Ks (this was the “Just get me to the plate, boys” game)
- NLCS Game 3 against Los Angeles – 8 IP, 0 ER, 10 Ks
- WS Game 1 in New York – 9 IP, 0 ER, 10 Ks
- WS Game 5 against New York – 7 IP, 5 ERs
We didn’t win the World Series that year, but Game 1 was one of the greatest performances we’ve ever seen. To anyone who never saw Cliff play, you’d be shocked at how comfortable and nonchalant he was all the time. It’s still jarring. Think of how Ranger Suarez fields a ground ball but imagine it for the whole game and every pitch. Even his delivery looked like he was just playing catch. That day he pitched a complete game with 10 strikeouts in Yankee Stadium against an absolute murderer’s row lineup1, but that wasn’t even the story. In the 8th inning, Lee snagged a comebacker behind his back and threw to first in an instant, laughing as he did it. He was having that kind of game. The one no one forgets though was in the 6th, when a popup came right to the mound. Lee barely moved before catching it by his waist and yawning as he did it. You’ve never seen anything like it.
As the saying goes, all good things… For no good reason the Phillies traded Cliff Lee that offseason. For as good as Ruben Amaro was at acquiring talent, he was terrible at trading it away. The Phillies would acquire Roy Halladay but give Cliff Lee to the Mariners for basically nothing. We aren’t talking about that right now, but you can parse through my sadness here if you want to. I’m just so happy he came back. Lost in the exchange though was his number. When Cliff left, Halladay took his #34 jersey. When he returned, he took on his more familiar #33.
- Derek Jeter, Johnny Damon, Mark Teixeira, Alex Rodriguez, Jorge Posada, Hideki Matsui, Robinson Cano, Nick Swisher, and Melky Cabrera ↩︎
Philly Front Office 
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