Free Agent Watch: Cliff Lee by Jared Carrabis
Are the Red Sox doing more than just 'kicking the tires' with Cliff Lee?


Agent Darek Brauneckery called his client, "clearly the best player on the free-agent market."

Are you going to disagree with him? Doubtful.

When the Red Sox were putting together a championship season in 2007, Cliff Lee was busy taking coach buses up and down from high-A Kinston, to double-A Akron, to triple-A Buffalo, all while going 5-8 with a 6.29 ERA at the major league level with the Cleveland Indians.

When Cleveland met Boston in the American League Championship Series that year, Lee was left off the postseason roster altogether.

A year later, Lee burst onto the baseball scene, going 22-3 with a league-best 2.54 ERA. Lee's 22 wins were the most in the majors, and his pinpoint location craft led to an AL-best 1.4 walks per-nine innings, while being the toughest pitcher in the American League to take out of the yard with a 0.5 HR per nine mark.

From 2008 to 2010, Lee would go 48-25 with an ERA of 2.98 and 1.122 WHIP. This past season, Lee led the American League in strikeout-to-walk ratio (10.28) with a ridiculous 0.8 walks-per-nine innings. In 212.1 innings in 2010, Lee walked just 18 batters.

To put things in perspective, John Lackey walked his eighteenth batter in his eighth start on May 16; and his nineteenth, and his twentieth, and his twenty-first.

Beyond the regular season, Lee was being mentioned in the same sentence as Sandy Koufax this past October. Prior to his Game 1 loss to the San Francisco Giants, Lee boasted a 7-0 record with a 1.26 ERA in eight career postseason starts.

Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports tweeted on Tuesday that Lee's agent has has been contacted by seven to eight teams who are interested in his client. Rosenthal names the obvious teams in the Yankees and the Rangers, then names the Phillies, who are apparently interested in re-acquiring the lefty to form the most fearsome foursome in the history of baseball (Halladay, Oswalt, Hamels, Lee), and the Dodgers, who won't have the money to sign Lee, anyway.

SI.com's Jon Heyman tweeted two hours later that the Astros are prepared to make a run for Lee, and then named the Cubs, Angels, Red Sox, in addition to the Phillies and Dodgers that were named by Rosenthal.



Before Red Sox fans get all excited, please don't count on Boston signing this guy. It's stupidity. The Red Sox will kick the tires on Lee, if only to drive up the price for the Yankees, but that's it. They will not be serious bidders, just as they weren't when CC Sabathia hit free agency.

This is going to be a two-team bidding war between the Rangers, and the Yankees. When it comes to bidding wars, the Yankees are rarely ever defeated, but not so far. If you're concerned that the Rangers can't hang, you are mistaken.

According to Biz of Baseball, The Rangers recently signed an extension of their TV deal with FOX that some reports peg at $1.6 billion over 20 years, beginning after the 2014 season. That’s $80 million per year, or four times what the team is estimated to be earning now.

Despite all of that, I still think that Lee ends up with the Yankees. I see Andy Pettitte hanging up the spikes, and beyond Sabathia and Hughes, the Yankees have no one to rely on. If they don't sign Lee, the next best available free agent starter is Carl Pavano. They've been down that road before, and I think it's fair to say that it was a "bad investment." File that one under "understatement of the year."

I don't think the Yankee fans spitting on Lee's wife incident will be enough for the left-handed Cy Young Award-winner to reject a six-year, $150 million deal to pitch in the Bronx.

Lee did note that pitching for the Rangers made it easier to be with his family, but for $150 million, he could pay Hollywood set-makers to create a fake Texas in Manhattan. Problem solved.

-Jared Carrabis

Chances that the Red Sox will sign Cliff Lee: 0.01%

SoxSpace's prediction: Cliff Lee to the Yankees

Published on November 09, 2010

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