It's at the point now that when Curt Schilling speaks, I want to drape a towel over my head.
As you've undoubtedly heard, Schilling thinks the Phillies were "stupid, stupid, stupid" to trade away Cliff Lee. Don't get me wrong, I'm not turned off by the fact that he thought it was the wrong deal to make, just that he spouted off about it the way he did, in typical Schilling fashion.
Naturally, this will re-open the debate. Several weeks ago over at Fire Jim Bowden, I was asked about the way the Halladay/Lee trades went down. Here was my answer:
The Phillies added Roy Halladay, but gave up Cliff Lee. Did they miss an opportunity to have a historically great team by keeping both?It depends how you look at it, and believe me, I've spent the entire winter doing just that, and, well, moving snow. I think by keeping Lee, the Phillies would have closed the door to contending very much after 2011 or 2012. By keeping him, they MIGHT have sealed the deal on another World Series, but they CERTAINLY would have been in trouble a few years from now. I fully expect Tyson Gillies [and Domonic Brown] to be in the outfield in a few years and Phillipe Aumont to be on the big club in some capacity. Unfortunately the firm of Utley-Howard-Rollins-Werth won't be around forever.
You can't forget, the Phillies have very few periods of sustained success. There was the 1976-1980 teams, and really, that's about it other than a few lightning in a bottle teams here and there (1950, 1993) and I think the current regime is very wary of drifting into insignificance again. They want to contend year in, year out. They don't want the golden era of Phillies baseball--and that's what this is--to end.
My heart wanted to keep Lee, my head tells me it was the right thing to do.



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