In an Alternate Phillies Universe: The elusive 7th shutout and Cliff Lee’s 2011 Cy Young candidacy
In 137 years of play, the Phillies have racked up more than a few what-ifs. What if Chico Ruiz doesn’t steal home in 1964? What if Danny Ozark replaces Greg Luzinski for defense on Black Friday 1977? What if the Phillies protect George Bell in the Rule 5 draft? What if they don’t trade Ferguson Jenkins? Or Ryne Sandberg? What if Michael Martinez doesn’t catch that ball in deep center field that 2011 night in Atlanta and the St. Louis Cardinals don’t make the postseason? What if Chase Utley’s knees don’t go bad and Ryan Howard doesn’t blow out his Achilles tendon? There are many, many more.
Over the next few days, we’ll explore a few of the moments and events that may have flown under the radar but still make you ask: what if? Join us in our trip to an alternate Phillies universe …
Can a pitcher lose a Cy Young award on one pitch?
All these years later, we wonder.
In 2011, the Phillies assembled a star-studded pitching staff that featured Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels and Roy Oswalt.
Lee helped pitch the Phillies to the World Series in 2009 and was traded in December of that year when Halladay arrived in a separate deal from Toronto. We won’t even get into the what-if that trading Lee and his team-friendly contract created in 2010.
Lee returned via free-agency before the 2011 season and helped the Phillies win a franchise-record 102 games and their fifth straight NL East title.
The left-hander had a remarkable year in 2011. He went 17-8 with a 2.40 ERA in 232⅔ innings. He finished with a 1.027 WHIP. He was NL Pitcher of the Month in June and August of that season. He went 5-0 with an 0.21 ERA in June and 5-0 with an 0.45 in August.
One of Lee’s most impressive feats in 2011 was the number of shutouts he racked up. He led the majors with six of them, tying him with Randy Johnson (1998) for the most of by any pitcher in the majors since Tim Belcher of the Dodgers had eight in 1989. Those were the days, my friend, before shutouts, at least for individual pitchers, were added to the endangered species list. Since 2013, no pitcher has had more than three shutouts in a single season.
Late in the 2011 season, Lee found himself in an NL Cy Young race with his teammate Halladay and young lefty Clayton Kershaw of the Dodgers.
Lee, who had just turned 33, began September with a walk-free, five-hit shutout of the Braves then followed with a performance in which he allowed just one earned run over seven innings against the Brewers.
Lee was on a roll. (Or should we say another roll? He had pitched three straight shutouts earlier in the season, after all.) September 15 came around. Makeup doubleheader against the Marlins at Citizens Bank Park. The Phillies’ magic number for clinching the division was dwindling and Lee was on the mound for the second game.
The game moved quickly and was barely two hours old when Lee took the mound in the bottom of the ninth inning with a 1-0 lead. He had given up just four hits and struck out a dozen. Lee got the first two outs then quickly went ahead of Jose Lopez, 0-2. The Phillies were in the midst of their 257-game sellout streak in those days and the crowd of 44,950 was on its feet, hoping to see Lee end a 1-0 shutout with his 13th strikeout.
Lee was a pitcher who worked quickly and though he often came across as emotionless because of his understated body language on the mound, he did hear the crowd and he did feed off it. How could he not? After going up, 0-2, on Lopez, Lee snatched the return throw from Carlos Ruiz, got the sign and without hesitation delivered the pitch. He had become swept up in the moment and the emotion and the pitch that came off his fingertips – his 117th of the game – was the only bad one he threw. The cutter, intended to be a backdoor special, caught the heart of the plate and Lopez, down in the count and in swing mode, swatted it into the left-field seats to not only steal Lee’s shutout, but his victory as the game was now tied at 1-1.
The Phillies won the game in the bottom of the 10th on a double by Ryan Howard. That was all that really mattered and Lee acknowledged that much after the game.
“We won and that’s what it’s all about,” he said. “Give Lopez credit. He made a good swing on a bad pitch and tied the game.”
All these years later, we can’t help but wonder what might have happened if Lee had tried to bounce a curveball against Lopez? Or if he had tried to climb the ladder and throw a four-seamer at the eyes?
If Lee retires Lopez and ends the game, he would have had seven shutouts – seven! – five more than anyone else in the NL that season and the most in the majors since 1998. Assuming the rest of his season went as it did, he would have finished with one more win and a 2.36 ERA.
Instead, Lee finished 17-8 with a 2.40 ERA. He pitched 232⅔ innings and had a 1.027 WHIP.
Halladay finished that season 19-6 with a 2.35 ERA in 233⅔ innings and had a 1.040 WHIP.
Kershaw (2.28), Halladay (2.35) and Lee (2.40) finished 1-2-3 in the majors in ERA. Justin Verlander (250), Kershaw (248) and Lee (238) finished 1-2-3 in the majors in strikeouts that season.
When the votes were tabulated, Kershaw, with a glistening, league-best WHIP of 0.977, ended up with the first of his three NL Cy Young awards. Halladay, who won the award in 2010, finished second (he got four first-place votes) and Lee was third, one spot ahead of Ian Kennedy, Arizona’s 21-game winner. The voting was not as close as you might suspect and Lee, in fact, did not receive a first-place vote.
But what might have happened if Jose Lopez had not hit that home run? That big shiny number 7 under the shutout column might have been such an impressive complement to the rest of Lee’s stellar season that some voters might have looked at things a little differently …
At least in an alternate universe.
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