Cliff Lee's Agent 'Doesn't Anticipate' Him Playing Again
In some rather unfortunate news, this might be the end of the road for former Cy Young Award winner, Cliff Lee.
On July 31, 2014, Lee was lifted from his start against the Washington Nationals when he was visibly in pain. The pain would later be revealed as a flexor tendon tear in his left elbow, and he hasn’t been on a major league mound since. It sounded like Lee was trying to mount a comeback for 2016, but teams weren’t thrilled about committing between $6-8 million on a major league deal to acquire his services. I’m sure there probably were a few teams who would’ve rolled the dice on him on a minor league deal, but it sounded like he was pretty adamant on knowing that he was guaranteed a spot in a major league rotation. I think his spot was more of a kicker than the money. Plenty of teams have money to burn, but there aren’t many teams willing to give a rotation spot to a 37-year-old, who hasn’t pitched since 2014, whose elbow is held together by yarn.
If this is truly it, does Cliff Lee have enough on his resume to become a Hall of Famer some day? Right off the bat, his Cy Young Award in 2008 gets him in the conversation. He’s led the league in wins, WHIP and ERA+ once, winning percentage and FIP twice, and has an ERA title to his name. Perhaps his greatest strength was his pinpoint control, which was reflected in the fact that he led the league in having the lowest walks-per-nine innings four times, and had the best strikeouts-to-walks ratio three times. With a career record of 143-91 and a 3.52 ERA, Hall of Fame voters are going to have to dig a little deeper on Lee to create a case for him. In the postseason, Lee shined on the big stage with a 7-2 record and 2.52 ERA with 89 strikeouts in 82 innings.
Here’s why Cliff Lee won’t be a Hall of Famer, and instead will be in the Hall of Pretty Good. Pitching wins don’t matter a whole lot when you’re evaluating a pitcher’s performance over a single season. Ask Felix Hernandez, who won the Cy Young in 2010 with a 13-12 record (which he absolutely deserved). But wins carry a lot of weight when it comes to Hall of Fame voting. And if you don’t have the wins, you need the hardware. 300 wins will get you into the Hall of Fame automatically. But if you look at Hall of Fame starting pitchers who have a win total in the neighborhood of Lee’s 143 wins, they compensated for their lack of career wins by having some of the greatest pitching seasons ever.
Take Sandy Koufax for example. Koufax only pitched for 12 seasons, and accumulated 165 wins in that time. Obviously, if you look beyond the win total, you’ll see that Koufax is one of the greatest pitchers the game has ever seen by racking up five ERA titles, leading the league in strikeouts and WHIP four times, wins three times, FIP and strikeouts per-nine-innings six times, won three Cy Young Awards, and also won an MVP. So when you put it like that, Lee’s probably not getting in the Hall of Fame, but it was one hell of a career regardless.