Rangers acquire All-Star ace Lee in trade with Mariners

Rangers acquire All-Star ace Lee in trade with Mariners



The Rangers have completed a deal with the Mariners for ace Cliff Lee only hours after a potential Yankees-Mariners trade fell through, sources said.
Texas is sending Justin Smoak in a package to Seattle. The switch-hitting first baseman entered this season as one of the most coveted prospects in baseball. In 70 games with the Rangers this year, Smoak is hitting .209 with eight home runs, 34 RBIs and 29 runs.
Mariners reliever Mark Lowe will join Lee as part of the trade to Texas. Seattle will pay the remaining $4 million on Lee's contract, which expires after this season.
Lee, the 2008 AL Cy Young Award winner, owns an 8-3 record this season with a 2.34 ERA.
The Rangers have recalled Chris Davis to take Smoak's place at first base.
It appeared that the Yankees were moving toward a deal for Lee earlier on Friday, but talks began to fall apart late in the afternoon. New York offered catcher Jesus Montero, infielder David Adams and a third prospect in basically a take-it-or-leave-it scenario.

that trade might get the rangers to the promise land

I like the haul back from the Rangers much better for my M's than I did the reported return from the yanks. Smoaks a very nice prospect get for a rental player. Always hope Lee liked his time in Seattle enough he could re-sign in the offseason, highly doubtful but keepin the hope alive.

Rangers trade for Cliff Lee..

ARLINGTON, Texas -- Cliff Lee is suddenly in the rotation for the American League West-leading Texas Rangers, who made a big deal despite bankruptcy proceedings and unsettled ownership.


View attachment 10322

Crafty Lefthander Cliff Lee as a Cleveland Indian..

The Seattle Mariners sent the ace left-hander and reliever Mark Lowe to the Rangers on Friday for rookie first baseman Justin Smoak and three minor leaguers. Texas also receives cash in the deal.

It was the third trade in less than a year for Lee (8-3, 2.34 ERA). He can become a free agent after the season.

For now, he will be starting for the Rangers (as early as today against Baltimore), who landed one of the most coveted players on the market despite financial constraints that made it uncertain if they could make such a move before the July 31 non-waiver deadline.

General manager Jon Daniels has repeatedly said the Rangers had some financial flexibility to make a deal.

Note: Sadly for White Sox fans - Right-hander Jake Peavy is out for the year. He will have surgery on a detached right shoulder muscle Wednesday.

FREEP.com

I am all broke up the Yankees didn't grab Cliff Lee..Wil.:drink:

Yankees, Brian Cashman try to send message with Cliff Lee deal and come up short for once. Mike Lupica Column.

This was a pretty amazing day in baseball, not because of anything that happened on the field, but because the Yankees did not get Cliff Lee. The Yankees almost always get what they want when they want it. Yankees didn't get their man Friday. Man bites dog.

Lee goes instead to the Texas Rangers, a team that came into Friday's games with a record four games worse than the Yankees but 5-1/2 games better than the Angels in the AL West. Now they add one of the best pitchers in the world. The Yankees know that about Cliff Lee as well as anybody after the last World Series.

So the Yankees, brave souls that they are, struggling to stay afloat with a payroll that would have been $50 million clear of the field if they'd made their deal with the Mariners for Lee, will soldier on without him. As much as our kids needed another starting pitcher.

By the way, only to the Yankees would Lee have looked like a bargain. Oh, sure. With his current salary of $9 million (before he goes looking for CC Sabathia money as a free agent), Lee would have been only the fifth highest-paid guy in the current Yankee rotation, at least while Javy Vazquez was still in it.

Oh, sure. Sabathia is making more than $24 million this season, A.J. Burnett is at $16.5 million, Andy Pettitte is at $11.75 million, Vazquez is at $11.5 million, Phil Hughes - who will get his someday the way he is pitching - is at a paltry $447,000. Imagine what the payroll for the starters would look like if Hughes was getting what he's worth.

As it is, the payroll for the starters is $64.5 million. It is about $7 million less than the entire payroll for the Tampa Bay Rays, from whom the Yankees haven't yet pulled away. Forget about A-Rod and Jeter and Teixeira, the Yankees have four starting pitchers making more than the top position player on the Rays, Carlos Peña.

But then this is the constant, continuing bliss of operating in a world without a salary cap. If the Yankees did have to spend the same money as everybody else, well, why even go there? It's a thought too horrible to contemplate.
The deal falling apart will most likely be somebody else's fault, this being Fun City and the Yankees being the Yankees. Although it sure doesn't seem to have helped them very much that the story about Lee got out before the deal was done.

So Texas comes up a big winner here, in a year when the Rangers are winning bigger than they were supposed to, in a year that really began for them with their manager, Ron Washington, revealing a positive test for cocaine.

Surely there will be those who scream about this trade being made, Texas taking on the rest of Lee's salary this season, because the Rangers are in bankruptcy, being partially propped up by Major League Baseball. The fact is, the Rangers offered the Mariners a better deal with better prospects in it, competed harder once they thought the Yankees were about to have Lee locked down.

"What," one baseball guy said Friday, "the Yankees are the only ones who are supposed to trade their prospects?"

Well, sometimes you get that idea in a company town, that every deal, even failed ones, are part of a master plan. You get that idea even as the Yankees look like the best team in baseball again, look as if they are ready to roll after Mark Teixeira's slow start, Alex Rodriguez's slow start, despite Nick Johnson's disappearance and the fact that Curtis Granderson hasn't shown up yet, not really.

Maybe Brian Cashman didn't just want to keep Lee away from other contenders, even though he has five starters pitching well right now. Maybe he didn't want people to get the idea, because of Nick Johnson and Granderson, because the Yankees let Johnny Damon just walk away - to the first-place Tigers - that maybe the Yankees hadn't improved quite as much as they could between the last out of the World Series and now.

It would have been some splash, Lee joining Sabathia at the very top of the Yankee rotation, followed by Hughes and Pettitte. You have to believe that Vazquez would have gone somewhere, unless you buy into the adage that you cannot have enough $10-million-plus pitching. Or maybe the Yankees intend to keep jerking Hughes around and want to put him back in the bullpen despite the All-Star season he is having as a starter.

Or maybe you can't have enough former Cy Young Award winners - Sabathia, Lee - who are former Cleveland Indians. Or maybe, with this sort of preemptive strike, a few weeks before the trading deadline, this was just the Yankees being the Yankees and Cashman again being the Cash Man when he thought he could add another star to the ones he already has.

He had Lee. The story got out. Before the next afternoon was out, the Yankees were out of the Cliff Lee business, at least for the time being.

Yankee fans were reduced to just cheering for their team Friday night in Seattle against Lee's replacement, not another big deal. Maybe we should blame LeBron.


New York Post - Mike Lupica..

Lupica must be a Mets fan. Here's another take.

Updated: Sat., Jul. 10, 2010, 6:10 AM


Seattle negotiations all Smoak and mirrors

By JOEL SHERMAN
Last Updated: 6:10 AM, July 10, 2010
Posted: 4:42 AM, July 10, 2010
The Yankees will spin now. They will say Cliff Lee was an extravagance and not a necessity.
They will point out that they are glad to keep a prospect as good as Jesus Montero and still know that they are going to get Lee in the offseason for just money — oodles and oodles of cash.
They will comfort themselves that they have a strong rotation now, the best record in the majors and are still the perceived favorites to win it all even without Lee.
That is a very mature, logical perspective.
But know this: The Yankees saw themselves, as late as yesterday morning, facing first-and-goal on the 1-yard line to obtain Lee. Nevertheless, they never reached the end zone. And that is painful, no matter the spin. Because as much as the Yankees want to look at the big picture and plan for the future, the only season that ever matters is the current one.
And the acquisition of Lee by the Yankees would have blanketed the major league landscape in hopelessness. There are no sure things, especially in a short series. But the concept of beginning each postseason series with CC Sabathia and Lee made it feel as if the Yankees were as close to a 28th championship as a team could be in early July.
But images of another ride up the Canyon of Heroes devolved into fury yesterday for the Yankees. The Mariners ultimately backed out of an agreement in principle, claiming problems with the physical condition of one of the players, Double-A second baseman David Adams, who currently is out with an ankle injury.
The Yankees, however, believe the Mariners were more devious here. They think the agreed-to-offer was still being shopped and that it moved Texas to go from not including Justin Smoak as the main piece in a package to including the touted first baseman. Smoak was the player the Mariners wanted all along, even more than Montero, the hitting prodigy who was the key to the Yankees deal.
The Yankees believe the worst here because Seattle asked them to exchange Single-A righty Adam Warren for Adams, and the Yankees agreed. But then, later in the day, the Mariners asked for Triple-A shortstop Eduardo Nunez. The Yankees had refused to include Montero and Nunez in the same package when Seattle asked weeks ago, and would not blink now. The Yankees came to believe at that point, however, that they were probably being used.
Suddenly, the idea of putting a stranglehold on the uber-competitive AL East vanished. Visions of opening October with the devastating 1-2 of Sabathia and Lee disappeared, as well. What emerged was the possibility of the Yankees facing Lee in the playoffs against the AL West-leading Rangers, and the Yankees surely can remember losing twice to Lee in last year’s World Series. It would bring quite a storyline to a Division Series or Championship Series.
But the Yankees were not looking to juice up the script in October. The DNA of the organization is to go for championships. That is why the Yankees did not see Lee as overkill.
The Yankees have done a good job in recent years of refurbishing their farm system. So Montero was available because the Yankees might be deeper in catching prospects than any organization in baseball. The Yankees project Adams as a high-level offensive second baseman, but their second baseman, Robinson Cano, is only 27 and might win the AL Most Valuable Player award. The third piece to the offer, Zach McAllister, had fallen behind many other pitching prospects in the Yankees’ eyes.
So the Yankees saw this as a package they could afford to surrender in exchange for a player they believed significantly increased their already strong championship possibilities.
Good for Hal Steinbrenner and general manager Brian Cashman for continuing to fuel an organizational ethos that so fixates on rings. And that is why this stings for the Yankees, even if you can already conjure up the image of Lee putting on pinstripes at a Yankee Stadium press conference this winter.
By then another champion will have been crowned. Maybe it will be the Yankees anyway. But for a moment on July 9, it felt like the parade already had begun before Seattle — fittingly — rained on that parade.