Cliff Lee

Rather pertinent to yesterday's post, this morning Jim Ingraham speculates that Cliff Lee may have taken an early lead in the battle for the fifth spot in the rotation. Granting, the reason for this is almost exclusively because he did not struggle yesterday against the Reds, while both Sowers and Laffey had difficulties. But thinking more about Lee and the pitching battle has presented an interesting question: what will become of Lee if he doesn't win the battle?

If Sowers doesn't win the battle, he'll head to Buffalo, that's well assumed. If Laffey doesn't win the battle, he will either head to the bully to be a swing man if the other choices there do not impress, or he will similarly head to Buffalo. But what of Lee? Will the Indians attempt to sell low, or will they demote him again? You really don't hear talk of Lee going to the pen.

I think it's interesting, though. Oftentimes failed starters head to the pen and they have a resurgence. Sometimes it's because their repertoire is not good enough to start, but I don't think this is the case with Lee, he's got four good pitches, including a good heater and a strong slider. Sometimes it's because they don't have enough stuff. Lee gets into the nineties, and has the aforementioned effective slider. Sometimes it's because they don't have endurance. Again, this isn't a problem with Lee, having pitched back to back 200 IP seasons.

No, the problem that was reported with Lee last year was that he just had trouble locating his fastball. And that's the sort of thing that I'm not sure a move to the pen will solve - in the pen, he'd throw his fastball even more. I think it would be interesting, and if he doesn't win the battle for the rotation, I think it would be obtuse to not try him in the bullpen, particularly if we'd just end up selling him very low. But I just don't think that Lee's problems would be solved by the move back.

Sowers, on the other hand, I'm just not convinced he's got enough stuff to make it as a starter. I think he would benefit from being able to give max effort for one or two innings at a time. It would give him a bit of leeway with his control within the strike zone. As Sowers is currently, he has absolutely no margin for error - if he doesn't hit his spots, he doesn't win.