Philadelphia Phillies starting pitcher Roy Halladay celebrates with catcher Carlos Ruiz Wednesday.
Congratulations to Philadelphia's Roy Halladay on pitching only the second postseason no-hitter in history.
PHILADELPHIA –Cliff Lee(notes) has been gone for nearly a year now, and yet before Roy Halladay (notes) walked to the mound Wednesday night, Lee loomed over the Philadelphia Phillies more than he had when he took them to the World Series last October. It was, after all, the calculated decisions by general manager Ruben Amaro to trade Lee and acquire Roy Halladay in separate December deals that came with their own loaded risk.
Yes, the Phillies were getting the best pitcher in baseball, but in doing so they were dealing away a postseason certainty, a pitcher who had delivered playoff victories to acquire one who had never pitched a meaningful October game.
Throughout the summer, even as Halladay dominated the National League, Amaro was blasted for trading away a pitcher who had won big, opening the door to uncertainty. The question seemed even more appropriate when Lee shut down the Tampa Bay Rays immediately before Halladay threw his first playoff pitch. It was a reminder, in case anyone needed it, that Halladay had better be very good in the postseason. Or what was the point of trading Lee in the first place?
Of course it is a laughable thought now. No-hitters answer a lot of questions. And having acquired Roy Oswalt(notes) in midsummer, the Phillies come back in Game 2 with another top pitcher before even throwing their postseason star of 2008, Cole Hamels(notes). Suddenly the Phillies’ gamble looks very wise, especially considering Oswalt is under contract through 2011 with an option for 2012 and Halladay is signed for three more seasons.
“With this team, as it is constituted, we could compete at this level for the foreseeable future,” the Phillies assistant GM Scott Proefrock said Thursday as the Phillies worked out on an off day between Games 1 and 2 of the National League Division Series.
Yet as euphoric as the Phillies are, don’t think Lee was ever far away. He has been around all year, haunting the team, always reminding management of what it had. Even after he was hurt in Seattle and then traded to Texas, where he struggled, there was always the sense that he could deliver big postseason wins, something that was unknown about Halladay.
On Wednesday night, as Halladay completed his no-hitter, Phillies advisor Dallas Green, once the team’s manager, stood beside Amaro in a box high above Citizens Bank Park and shouted into the roar around them. Green might have been the only person in the stadium who could say he had been at both postseason no-hitters – having watched Don Larsen’s perfect game from the right field stands at Yankee Stadium.
“That guy is so good it brings tears to my eyes,” he said about Halladay.
Then he smiled.
“We forgot about Cliff Lee,” he said.
The Phillies always thought they had no choice but to trade Lee. They knew re-signing him after this season would be a near impossibility given the four or five years he would want was more than they were willing to commit to a 32-year-old pitcher. Especially when they’d be taking on Halladay’s hefty salary. And when they found a desperate trade partner in Seattle who with the Blue Jays and Athletics agreed to a four-team trade that got them Halladay, the Phillies jumped.
There is an art to making the right trades, to letting teams think they are getting something good when you aren’t giving them much in return. The Atlanta Braves did it for years, building up prospects then trading them away at the height of their hype for more established players, only to have the other team learn that its Bruce Chen(notes or Odalis Perez(notes) really wasn’t the next John Smlotz(notes) or Tom Glavine(notes).
In a lesser way this is exactly what Philadelphia has done, dealing away many of its top prospects in the Lee, Halladay and Oswalt trades and yet never having been burned by the moves. They still hold on to the young players they like the most – outfielder Domonic Brown(notes), first baseman Jonathan Singleton and pitcher Jared Cosart – while having built the best starting rotation in baseball.
None of that would have meant anything if after Lee shut down the Tampa Bay Rays, Halladay had pitched poorly in his first postseason start. The Phillies know they got an upgrade in Halladay over Lee, privately pointing people to the statistics that justify this, yet what is that certainty if the pitcher they dealt away outpitches Halladay in the postseason?
Halladay was so good it might not even matter if he and Oswalt can’t deliver a third straight World Series. In fact, he might have been good enough to make everybody forget about Cliff Lee.
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