Q.  Which leaves Cliff Lee's prognosis, where?

A.  On the one hand, a pitcher with his stuff shouldn't be as great as he is.  To me, he's defying gravity.

But on the other hand, Cliff Lee and Greg Maddux have taken "pitchability" to 90 on the 20-80 scale.   Lee's got his third pitch locked and loaded while the first pitch is in the air.  It's become a big joke to him, whipsawing the hitters across four pitches none of which they can get a good swing at.

Seems to me that every pitcher like Lee that I ever saw, came back to earth relatively soon.  The guys who won 300 games, had easily-repeatable games based on overwhelming weapons. 

But "back to earth" might only mean back to 2009, and it might be several years before even that happens.

Lee's video controller isn't going to frazz out soon.  He's overachieving a bit, but he's got this game figured out.

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Q.  Which means WHAT to me, following the Mariners?

A.  The Mariners have fed us a verrrrrrry long list of payroll-related disappointments.  Starting with 1998, when they wouldn't give Randy Blinkin' Johnson three years, and thereby deprived us of our birthright to watch that man pitch for 15 years.

But going back beyond that, of course.  Don't even get me started on the George Agyros Mariners, right Moe?

..............

The Mariners could have gone to ownership about this one.  Lincoln went to ownership for the right to offer huge dough to Junior and ARod at the same time, "a special hit in a special case" and got it approved, easily.

Jack Zduriencik knew very well how good Cliff Lee is, and Cliff Lee stated that he wanted very much to stay here.  The Mariners just said no.  We're used to it. 

Been seeing it for 30 years.   The idea of pure baseball joy, for the serious fans in town, just didn't seem to mean much.  No more than it did when Randy Johnson was powerflushed.

...............

And Lee is a super likeable guy.

He's intelligent, hence the repeated plateau leaps.  Intelligent and humble and rich, and gracious about it.

He's a man's man, a Civil War soldier good-naturedly accepting his fate.  It's such a crying shame he's not going to be here, ain't it?

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Q.  They got Smoak, though.  Does that make it okay?

A.  Yes, it does.  Siggghhhhh.

As SSI also, ahem, predicted, the utter glory of Cliff Lee was bound to produce a stunning return.  Nobody other than Cliff Lee could have produced Montero / Smoak plus a side cargo box of extremely valuable sweeteners.

Let's don't be hosers, eh, about the fact that Smoak isn't ready yet.  The Mariners have never traded for a young stud of his caliber.  Smoak and Ackley are super-special college hitters, lefty in Safeco, infielders, and they're going to be the basis of the next Mariner team.

Zduriencik didn't get approval for a Lee deal, so he E=MC^2'ed it into the finest* young ML-ready hitter in the game.  Plus a lot.  If Lee were a Entertainment Coupon for an automatic win, it's still 12 starts of him for our franchise hitter.

..................

Lee's relevance to the M's was that the sheer brilliance of his dazzle brought us the foundation of the next* team that will win a pennant here.

Love ya, Cliff.  A comet across the sky, man.

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Cheers,

Dr D