As Cliff Lee takes the hill today for game one of the National League Division Series (2:37, TBS), think back to late July and the trade that brought him to Philly, when four current or former BlueClaws were traded for the reigning Cy Young Award winner.

• RHP Jason Knapp was in a Greenville, SC mall with BlueClaws teammate Rob Roth when the deal went down. He heard from his agent, then waited out four and a half hours at the ballpark before the deal was official and he heard from Indians brass. Knapp was 2nd in the league in strikeouts when he was injured in July and recently had shoulder surgery, though he is expected ready for spring training. As the BlueClaws team bus was driving over to the ballpark, with Knapp on it, tv commentators were saying that the 18-year old was the key to the deal for the Indians, which brought some ooohs and aaahs from his BlueClaws teammates.
• C Lou Marson went 11-44 with the Indians as a September call-up (which he was last year with the Phillies) and the catcher on the 2006 champion BlueClaws will have every chance to be on the Tribe’s Opening Day roster next year. He will have to hold off uber-prospect Carlos Santana who might be another year away.
• IF Jason Donald was hurt much of the year with Lehigh Valley and didn’t play after August 15th with AAA Columbus in the Cleveland system. He’s the one of the three older members of the deal to not make his big league debut, but that should come next year and could come in the beginning of the season. The SS will be a utility infielder after starring for seven weeks with the 2007 BlueClaws before an early June promotion.
• RHP Carlos Carrasco was a guy the Phillies were hesitant to trade, and Chuck LaMar talked about his excellent “stuff” but ultimately, without Kyle Drabek or Domonic Brown in the deal, he was going to be in it. Carrasco debuted with the Indians, but went 0-4, 8.87 over five starts. He gave up four runs in his first pro inning and it took six hitters to get an out (except when Curtis Granderson was thrown out trying to stretching a double into a triple). He was one of the aces on the 2006 BlueClaws title team.
• All in all, the Phillies traded four of their top ten prospects to get the man who gets the ball today, Cliff Lee, and it’s hard to argue the deal didnt’ work out from the Phillies’ standpoint.

“The first thing I thought of when I got traded was, it’s an opportunity to get back to the postseason and contribute,” Lee said, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, adding that in ’07, “I had to be a backup and sit there and watch other guys play.” That would be the “A Bug’s Life” series against the Yankees, before they blew a 3-1 lead to the Red Sox in the ALCS.

Share This Post!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 6:14 am and is filed under General Baseball, Past BlueClaws, Phillies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.