Has anybody ever heard of Cliff Lee? I know I haven't. I consider myself a pretty big baseball fan and I've never even heard this guy's name before. That's why I was so surprised when he was announced as the American League's Cy Young Award winner. (The Cy Young Award is basically the MVP Award for pitchers). I guess if this guy is as good as he sounds he is the best kept secret in baseball.
I was reading an article out of the New York Times and apparently it's not like he just suddenly emerged as a star this year. He also finished fourth in the race for the Cy Young in 2005. Maybe the reason why he isn't that well known is because in 2007 when the Cleveland Indians came within a game of the World Series, he was left off of the roster because he wasn't having a very good season. During 07 he experienced an abdominal injury that set him back, then he never really got back to full form and he was demoted to the minor league where he had a record of 5-8 with an ERA (earned run average) of 6.29.
His teammates where sure that he would have a much better year than last year. This is what his teammate, Jensen Lewis, had to say about it,
"I think we all could tell right out of the gate, from spring training, that Cliff was completely different than the year before. He carried himself differently, with the utmost confidence in his stuff."
"I think we all could tell right out of the gate, from spring training, that Cliff was completely different than the year before. He carried himself differently, with the utmost confidence in his stuff."
His confidence really showed this year and he was rewarded with it on Thursday with the AL Cy Young Award. Lee's record this year was 22-3 with and ERA of 2.54 which makes him just the third pitcher since 1990 to have that many wins with an earned run average that low. The other two pitchers to do this were Pedro Martinez in 1999 and Randy Johnson (who i think needs to retire but that's a whole other story) in 2002.
The other contenders in the Cy Young race were Toronto's Roy Halladay (record of 20-11) who finished second, the closer for the Angel's Fransisco Rodriguez (set a single season record for number of saves) who finished third, and the Yankee's Mike Mussina (record of 20-9) who finished in fourth.
So if there is anybody out there like me who didn't know the name Cliff Lee, you now have no excuse to not know who he is unless of course you hate baseball and you don't really give a rats ass who he is. In 2008 Lee proved all of his haters wrong and really made a name for himself.
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