Lookout Landing

Clifton Phifer Lee arrives in Seattle with some high expectations resting on his left arm. The Cy Young Award, deserved, and the World Series accomplishments against the Yankees have set Lee firmly in the sights and minds of every baseball fan out there. Those eyes, in turn, will now pass more than a glancing gaze to Seattle. It is among our hopes that Lee brings those eyes here and Felix gives them a reason to stick around, forming a starting pitching combination the likes of what was seen in Cleveland with Lee and CC Sabathia just a few years back.

Baseball games can get a touch monotonous during the season, being an every day routine and mostly alike. That day's starting pitcher is the only constantly changing variable which is why games are usually referred to by who's pitching. We have Felix Day. We don't have Ichiro Suzuki Day. Everyday, thank god, is Ichiro Day. The arrival of a Felix Hernandez start serves to break up the pace from the Jason Vargas' and Garrett Olson's of the world. No offense to either of them, they are both fine pitchers, but they are not Felix. Few are.

But even the thrill of Felix Day can get a little dampened over the summer days once we've settled into the daily groove of following baseball. They still offer the higher probability to see something special, but the electricity that surrounds them at the start of the year, when baseball is still fresh, can be dimmed. In Spring our thirst for baseball, dried out over six long months, is still not yet quenched. Those first few games, everything about baseball that we take for granted is new again. The grass of the field is such a brilliant shade of green.

Aside from the curse of familiarity, I think there's another factor at play for, not quite apathy, but perhaps a less than full appreciation. We don't see the end coming. Not for Felix anyways. When you don't know for sure when someone is going to end, it is easy to subconsciously assume that things will stay the same. One day, Felix will leave and a lot of people are going to look back and wish they had gone to more of his starts while a Mariner.

Well, we have a much better idea when the end will be for Cliff Lee. His contract is up at the end of the season, and unlike Felix, he's not a product of the system with a huge local appeal. Seattle is technically the sixth team to hold rights to Cliff Lee's services. What would it take for 2011 to not mark the seventh?

I mentioned at the meet up that I felt the odds of Lee staying in Seattle were extremely low since he would certainly justify a bigger contract than the one John Lackey just got this winter. Lee is obviously the better pitcher and is just two months older than Lackey. Granted there will be a 14 month difference in terms of age when the contract will be signed, but I think the talent gap is likely to make that up. I stated that I was uncomfortable with the idea of even signing Lee to Lackey's contract.

In the vein of the Felix Hernandez post before, I felt it worthwhile to look into Cliff Lee and explore differing scenarios for how much I would extend him for as a sort of benchmark. This one is a bit trickier since I doubt the team is looking at extending Cliff Lee right this moment. They could always surprise me, but I think their focus, of the two, is on Felix and the team probably needs some time to sell itself to Cliff Lee. Because of that, I am going to treat this hypothetical extension as one going into effect after the 2010 season.

Lee's first season under this new deal would be his age 32 season. Operating under the assumption that Lee posts a 5.5-win season in 2010 as outlined in the division projections, it's going to require some work on the Mariners' part to limit his deal to four years. A decline in performance is a much more vital concern with Lee than with Felix even though pitchers age differently than hitters do, so it's not as straight forward as it might seem.

Here are my basic estimates. Same guidelines as with Felix - these are the year-by-year contract breakdowns, starting in 2011, that I think would be roughly fair to both sides:

1 year, $20 million
2 years, $38 million
3 years, $54 million
4 years, $68 million
5 years, $80 million

Lackey just signed a five-year, $82.5 million contract. A deal that I was not overly fond of, neither afterwards nor beforehand. Cliff Lee, being a much better pitcher, in my opinion, actually comes close to being worth a contract of that nature, though given that it would be for his age 32-36 seasons, I would be pretty skeptical of him living up to that worth, even if I'm already docking him a half-win every season.

On the other hand, that last season would represent a roughly $12 million extra outlay, and would even be less since it would present an extra year to defer costs. Given the expected cost of a win by 2015, Lee would only have to be about a 2.5-3 win player that year to be worth it. That sounds easy now, but I don't know, would you want to take that risk?

I would love to have Cliff Lee around for more than just this one season, but if my choice right this instant was letting him walk or giving him a 5/80 contract, I'm letting him walk. That might be a fair offer based on his value, but I'm just not comfortable with deals for that long to pitchers that old. If I had my druthers, the Mariners would lock up Felix and then approach Lee about inking an extension now, replacing his current $9 million deal with something like 4 years for $60 million.