Cliff Lee gets hammered

Taken from the Associated Press story about the Indians' 6-4 loss to Charlie Manuel's Phillies yesterday:

Despite giving up 11 hits and six runs in four innings, Cleveland pitcher Cliff Lee was content with his performance.

"As far as locating pitches and throwing my off-speed stuff, I felt good," Lee said. "I threw a couple pitches that hit a little too much of the plate for the counts that I was in and they got hits. For the most part, a lot of the hits they got, I threw the pitch right where I wanted to."

As Lee, the former future superstar, battles Jeremy Sowers and Aaron Laffey for the fifth spot in the rotation, you'd think Lee would be less satisfied with this kind of performance. But Sowers and Laffey are both struggling too, even worse than Lee. As Gerry Fraley of The Sporting News notes, Lee's spring ERA is a hideous 8.30, but it's still three runs better than Sowers or Laffey, who are both at 11.25.

C.C. Sabathia has his spot in the rotation nailed down, obviously. But he made some headlines the other day, simply because of questions he was asked by the New York media. He's a free agent after this season, and some idiot writers asked him if he might like to play for the Yankees next year. C.C. was too smart to fall into that trap, which is yet another reason to love C.C.

I understand speculation about what free agents are going to sign where next season, but do we have to be talking about it before this one has even started? And does anyone really think that a superstar who's on a contending team is going to say something stupid like "Yes, I'm looking forward to changing teams next year"?

We all know the Yankees are going to make C.C. an offer next year, and that offer will be worth a lot of money. But we really don't need to be reminded of it now.