Professional Baseball Career
Lee was drafted by the Florida Marlins with the 12th pick of the 8th round of the 1997 Major League Baseball Draft out of Benton High School in his hometown of Benton, Arkansas, but instead chose to attend Meridian Community College in Mississippi. Later, Lee was drafted by the Baltimore Orioles in the 20th round of the 1998 amateur draft, but did not sign, opting to attend the University of Arkansas.
In the 2000 amateur draft, he was chosen in the 4th round by the Montreal Expos and signed in July of that year. During 2002, Lee played for Double-A Harrisburg, and compiled a 7–2 record with a 3.23 ERA in Eastern League play by mid-summer.
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