Even as he was explaining his decision to trade Cliff Lee last winter, Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. knew he was draping a bull's-eye across his back. It was one of those moves that define a GM.
Would he be bold for adding Roy Halladay to his pennant-winning club while flipping postseason hero Lee for some minor-league talent?
Or would he be a fool for squandering the rare opportunity to run Halladay, Lee, and Cole Hamels out as three-fifths of a dream rotation?
Even those of us who gave Amaro the benefit of the doubt in December were quick to acknowledge that doubt was part of the equation. Heck, even Amaro acknowledged the doubt.
"Is it going to be the right decision? " Amaro said at the time. "That remains to be seen. I do not know that. Is it risky? Yes, because we're moving a lot of talent out of our system."
Midway through the Season That Could Have Been, the Phillies are oddly out of sync. After they fell to six games behind Atlanta Wednesday night, manager Charlie Manuel expressed everyone's frustration.
"We've got to get that edge," Manuel said. "Something on our team is missing. It's that edge."
As injuries have mounted, so has public pressure on Amaro to do something. And that's where things really get interesting, because his rationale for trading Lee was the need for prospects that could evolve into players or be used in future trades.
Well, the future is here.
Amaro didn't help himself Tuesday, telling reporters pitching is the team's No. 1 need as trade season opens. Pitching? You mean like, say, Cliff Lee?
Would things be that much different with Lee? Hard to say. He missed the first three weeks of the season after a spring-training injury. If you take his 13 starts for Seattle and match them up with the Phillies' results on the same dates, you find nine games that probably would have had the same result.
If you could magically transplant Lee's performance into the other four games, three Phillies losses would become wins and one win - by the same logic - would have been a loss. So that's a net gain of two wins, which means the Phillies would still be in third place.
Granted, this is flawed. It doesn't factor in opponents, conditions, and other variables. The fact that Halladay is pitching brilliantly but has a 10-7 record supports the idea that Lee would not, by himself, have changed the course of the season's first half.
