SOT Holy Crap the Phillies Got Cliff Lee- Best Starting 4 Pitchers Ever??

[cdn_collector]

Originally Posted by David R

Richard,
Halladay is great, no doubt. But I think Cain is one of the most underrated starters in baseball. The Giants have not given him much run support and the bullpen has let him down consistently his whole career. He is six or seven years younger than Halladay, has a similar career ERA, and gives up fewer hits and strikes out more batters per nine innings than Halladay. For next season I would take him as a starter on my staff over Halladay. Time will tell whether that would be a good decision.
Best,
David R

Fair enough, David, I can't argue too much with that. When you talk about lack of run support, Halladay suffered that in spades with Toronto. Curiousity will force me to compare their early statistics to see how they stack up. That's probably a more fair way of looking at this.

Lastly, since I made my disappointment known about the one Lincecum start I got to see, I should also acknowledge that on that same trip that I saw Lincecum, I watched Cliff Lee pitch at Oakland, and then watched the Jays play in Anaheim. Including the Skydome [I will not call it the Rogers' Centre!], I have been to four stadiums and AT&T is my hands down favourite! Great building, great baseball environment, great fans.


Regards,

Richard.

[tbob]

Hard to believe Cliff Lee was the #3 pitcher on his collegiate team. Of course numbers 1 and 2 never made it beyond AA. I used to love to watch Lee pitch in college, I always thought he was underrated.
I think Cashman forgot to factor in Lee is an Arkansas kid and having his wife spat on and having obscenities hurled on her by drunk, obnoxious big city New York fans is something that certainly didn't help his case. Right on the heels of this, Cashman comes out and says Greinke does not have the right makeup to pitch in New York City, alluding to the fact Zach has had bouts with anxiety disorders in the past, so the Yanks aren't interested. Wow, winning friends and influencing people