From Trade Afterthought to Trade Commodity

Lee Shines Since Joining The Phillies

Not for the first time, Cliff Lee, a reigning Cy Young winner, belongs to a franchise with championship aspirations, and the Philadelphia Phillies will deploy Lee with that goal in mind. Lee, on Sunday, will start against the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 3 of the National League Championship Series, currently tied at one game apiece. If he pitches as he did in the regular season's final two months, or as he did in two starts in the NL Division Series, then Lee will fortify his status as the rarest of commodities: an ace capable of carrying his team to, and through, the postseason.

Lee, 31, is completing his eighth major league season. Though Sunday marks his first LCS start, his career has already been defined by pennant races. This time around, days before the trading deadline, Lee jumped from a rebuilding team (Cleveland) to a team that needed an ace. Everything has worked out perfectly. The Phillies surrendered four prospects, none among their most prized. Lee arrived in the National League by winning seven of 12 starts, throwing three complete games, and earning his manager's highest praise.

"I think he was a huge pick-up for us," Charlie Manuel said.

Lee, however, is familiar with a different kind of scenario, where a franchise with championship aspirations deployed Lee with that goal in mind and sent him elsewhere. In 2002, the Montreal Expos needed an ace, and they found a rebuilding team willing to surrender one. On July 27 of that year, Montreal and Cleveland struck a deal that was designed to push the Expos into the playoffs. Instead, it became a trade that the Expos -- now the Nationals -- greatly regret.

Said then-Montreal scouting director Dana Brown: "Hindsight being 20-20, we gave up some pretty good players."

The deal sent three minor league prospects -- Lee, Grady Sizemore and Brandon Phillips -- to the Indians in exchange for Bartolo Colón, who at the time had a 10-4 record and a 2.55 ERA. Lee Stevens and some cash were also included in the deal, but essentially, those at the negotiating table saw the deal thusly: The Expos were dealing away their future, because they didn't think they had one anyway.

The Expos, in 2002, were operating under control of Major League Baseball. Most employed by the team at the time believed the franchise wouldn't exist in 2003. Perhaps it could be sold. More likely, it would be contracted. Either way, when the team entered July with a surprise chance at a wild card, General Manager Omar Minaya tried his best to make the final year in Montreal a magical one.

"There was no doubt there was going to be contraction. No doubt," Minaya said by phone on Saturday. "It was in the air, put it that way. It was in the air. But that was one of the things that was out there, the team was going to be contracted. The thinking was, the club was in a playoff race. We owed it to players and fans to try to win. It was one of those times, you're trying to compete. That was a big-time message."

After the sides agreed on the trade, Minaya was labeled in columns as a magic-maker. Cleveland General Manager Mark Shapiro, announcing a formal start-from-scratch process, was pilloried.

In hindsight, the deal crippled the Expos franchise, and explains much about why the team arrived in Washington with a barren farm system. Phillips, the best-regarded prospect of the three at the time of the deal, has developed into a 30-30 second baseman with Cincinnati. Sizemore has become an all-star outfielder with Cleveland. Lee, despite some inconsistencies, has won 14 or more games four times since 2005. In that span, the Nationals have had four double-digit winning seasons total by pitchers, two of them from less-than-luminaries such as Tim Redding (10, in 2008) and Ramon Ortiz (11, in 2006).

By all accounts, Lee has exceeded even the best-case expectations. When he was traded to Cleveland, he was a Class AA pitcher with a history of wildness. He often threw across his body.

But at least one person saw the potential. Tony LaCava, in the winter of 2001, left as Montreal's director of player development to take a front office job in Cleveland. When Shapiro mentioned to LaCava about a potential Colón trade, he asked for recommendations about Montreal's system. LaCava recalled all the work Lee had put in in 2001 with Class A pitching coach Ace Adams. Lee, LaCava thought, was figuring it out.

"When the trade was made," LaCava said, "I was driving on the turnpike. I heard on the radio announcers say, 'If you see Mark Shapiro and his wife at the dinner, go over and turn his table over.' That's the stuff he had to endure. He got hammered. But he made a great trade."