the end of his contract with the Phillies. While waiting to hear whether his elbow injury would require surgery, he voiced concerns to Meghan Montemurro of USA Today that he might never pitch again. By December 2015, however, Lee had received medical clearance to play baseball, and his agent, Darek Braunecker, told reporters that he would pitch in the 2016 MLB season if he found "the right fit". The following month, Braunecker clarified that Lee was adjusting to full-time fatherhood, but that he retained an interest in pitching professionally again. On February 23, 2016, Braunecker announced that Lee would not pitch during the 2016 season. While not an official retirement, the announcement appeared to signal the end of Lee's professional baseball career. In 13 seasons with MLB, Lee posted a 143–91 record with a 3.52 ERA, and struck out 1,824 batters. Lee was one of 18 new nominees on the 2020 ballot for the National Baseball Hall of Fame. He appeared on two out of 397 ballots, falling short of the 5-percent voting threshold required to appear on subsequent ballots. Pitching style By the end of his career, Lee had a four-pitch repertoire consisting of a fastball, cutter, changeup, and curveball. Of these, he considered his curveball to be his most effective pitch, but used it only sparingly, as he had better command of his other pitches. He also employed a slider, although he rarely included that pitch in discussions of his repertoire. David Murphy of the Philadelphia Daily News described Lee's slider interchangeably with his cutter as one primary type of breaking ball. He was not known as a power pitcher: in 2010, Lee's average fastball velocity was only . in line with the MLB average from 2008 to 2015. Instead, he preferred to focus on accuracy and command, throwing the majority of his pitches for strikes. In 2012, Lee threw a strike on the first pitch to 71 percent of the batters that he faced, and he had the highest strikeout-to-walk ratio of any pitcher over the age of 33 since Curt Schilling in 2001 and 2002. His fastball in particular was difficult to hit, landing on the low inside corner of the strike zone. After his 2007 demotion to the minor leagues, Lee told Joe Jordan, then a scouting director for the Baltimore Orioles, that he had adopted a philosophy of throwing "Three pitches for strikes every