Seattle Sports Insider

The Morrow Lament

overblown and inaccurate

Posted by

7/17/13

The draft of 2005 was pretty painful for me. It wasn’t like the Clement draft where we passed on every great hitter available to take the one flop… but it wasn’t good. Anytime you pass up a local pitching phenom who becomes a Two-time Cy Young award winner and world champion to draft a diabetic pitcher with a spotty starting history in college with the #5 pick, things could probably be better. I was thinking Lincecum / Scherzer / Kershaw at the time in order of preference, but it was not to be.

Morrow it was. And we bullpenned him for a couple of years, then tried to let him start, then let him whine his way around between the two until we traded him for a closer. Toronto immediately made him a starter, and the cries of woe started. “See?? We messed him up with all this bullpen stuff! Wow, look, he’s leading the majors in strikeouts! He’s such a stud, we got destroyed in this trade…” and then the sackcloth and ashes routine outside the gates of the stadium began.

So how has this really worked out? We’ve gotten destroyed in WAR, right? Well, that’s true.

B-R WAR:
League (in SEA): 1.0 WAR in 2.5 seasons
Morrow (in TOR): 5.5 WAR in 3.5 seasons (3+ in career year)

But Morrow is starting, and League’s WAR is leveraged, so it’s not quite that big a discrepancy. In fact, we probably need to look at whomever took a rotation spot that Morrow might have had.

Player A: 4.30 ERA in 500 IP, 8 hits/ 3.5 walks/ 9.5 K per 9, 98 ERA+, 5.5 WAR
Player B: 4.10 ERA in 700 IP, 9 hits/ 2.5 walks/ 5.5 K per 9, 95 ERA+, 8.3 WAR

One guy is certainly more explosive as a pitcher, but it's not the guy with more WAR. I mean, 4 more K per 9 is VERY impressive… except that it hasn’t affected the results at all and in fact, throwing that hard seems to be beyond the structural capabilities of that pitcher.

Innings pitched last 4 years:

Player A: 146, 179, 124, 54 (and stopped)
Player B: 192, 201, 217, 91 (and counting)

Brandon Morrow, meet Jason Vargas.

Apart from one year in the sun, Morrow has performed like a less-healthy Vargas. Career ERA is identical, ERA+ numbers the last 5 years are 97, 93, 90, 144(!) and 76 for Morrow and 87, 104, 88, 99, and 106 for Vargas. Morrow's career year came when he threw just 120 innings. Vargas has 3 seasons where he's thrown more innings than Morrow EVER HAS, and will once again top Morrow in innings. Morrow IS a reliever who has a starter’s body and is being (over) used in that position – hence his constant breakdowns. Maybe it’s the diabetes, I dunno, but he’s not and likely never will be a 200 inning guy. He probably will need TJ surgery (forearm tightness - right...) while Vargas soldiers on. Of course, we cashed in Vargas for Morales and rolled Jason’s money into Iwakuma, who is an All-Star. Is anyone lamenting that?

Losing Morrow hurts like losing any #4 starter. In a perfect world, not much at all; in a world where all you have is #6 starters then it hurts more. But he's only a #4 starter for 2/3 of any season. The rest of the time you're throwing a #6 starter in there for him. His actual, on the field value is not as high as you'd think. Strikeouts are pretty, but pretty doesn't win ballgames.

If we got robbed, then the dude who stole from us wound up with some fuzzy dice, a half-empty bottle of Mad Dog, and a Ferrari engine welded into the chassis of a 1978 Pinto that can’t seem to go a block without breaking down. The corvette is still in the garage. Or it was until we traded it to Detroit for some counterfeit handbags, a can of used pepper spray and three sticks of Big Red. If you want to get upset, please do so about Fister.

I don’t want to hear any more about Morrow. Losing him is not hurting us, because he’s not helping anyone win anything.

Blog:

Gordon

Comments

I put this is the shouts literally at the same moment a G post

ed this...
So I will put it here as well. It was way to long for the shouts anyways :)
M-Pops says:
Late to the party -- Delebar is an All-Star?! Didn't the M's just DFA Thames? Which of the Morrow trade and Delebar trade is worse?

Thirteen says:
Morrow by far. Delabar isn't a starter.

I disagree. I think the Delebar trade is the more egregious one. First off lets look at the Morrow trade... You have to remember the context. Morrow was a failed starter, failed reliever, who was back in the minors (he may have made it back to the majors by the trade, I don't recall) trying to be a starter again. The relationship between Morrow and the M's was ruined and most of his prospect shine was as well. They needed to trade him to give everyone a fresh start and to move on. And really their return on him wasn't so bad. They got Brandon league who was was a fine closer and reliever for us for almost 2 years, he accumulated 52 saves for us and never had an ERA out of the 2s or 3s. Then we passed him on to the Dodgers and got Leon Landry, who some people are quite excited about (although this has not be a great year for him) and Logan Bawcom, whom might be just as good of a bullpenner eventually as League was to start with... We also got Johermyn Chavez in the origional Morrow trade, but let's not speak of him ;)
As for Morrow's actual performance, I think it is telling that we are paying LESS (Morrow is making 8 mil this year) for Joe Saunders who is performing BETTER than Morrow. Other than the one blip last year (Morrow has and ERA under 3) his actual performance hasn't been anything to write home about. He has worked out as a fine BOR, not much else. This is what has ALWAYS been the problem with Morrow. People see the hot fastball and the typical baseball player look and think, "Dang this guy is going to star!"and it has never come to bear in his actual performance! Even in college Dallas Buck with his measly 90 mph FB, but bulldog mentality was more feared than Morrow. 96 mph is nice, but it is straight as an arrow and right down the middle, even the college guys got their hits off it.
Now lets look at Delebar he was pre arb, nothing was forcing us to trade him. He was only in his first year in the bigs and performing OK, not great. Plus he had a fantastic story and background, one that we could use in fluff pieces and ads (something that is quite important to this org), however we traded him for Thames, who I actually quite liked, but got zero chance here and is gone now... Thames was traded for Ty Kelly who may still turn into something, but I doubt it.
SO what which was worse? Trading the headcase BOR starter who always feels disappointing because his results never tracked with his arm for 1.5 years of a star closer and some interesting minor leaguers, or Trading a great story who turned himself into a All-star bullpenner for basically... nothing :( I say trading Delebar is worse, way worse.

Morrow was 2006 Draft

Clement was 2005 Draft. Man were our Drafts from the late 90s forward ever a wasteland until Z arrived!

Yeah, 2005 is apparently hard-wired into my head

Whenever I'm writing about draft snafus. Morrow was definitely '06, the sequel that wasn't quite as terrible but still pretty bad. Nothing's gonna top 2005:
1 - J. Upton: 15.3 WAR2 - A. Gordon: 20.9 WAR3 - Clement: -1.2 WAR4 - R. Zimmerman: 32.2 WAR5 - Braun - 35.5 WAR6 - Romero - 9.8 WAR7 - Tulo - 30.2 WAR
Just. Brutal. I was stoked about Zimm, and fine with Tulo as a fallback and likely selection. Boy did that NOT work out. But then, none of Bavasi's guys did.
In this article I went through the Bavasi drafts as an overview, and the only semi-impactful picks are Fister, Morrow and Saunders. Chris Tillman is putting it together, so maybe he counts now in the Morrow kind of #3-4 pitcher.
But really, it's just Fister. One guy making a real impact, out of 5 drafts. That's just rough.
~G

I disagree with your wording.

I don't think it's fair to say League was a star closer, or to say that Thames was "nothing" while Johermyn Chavez was "interesting".

But League WAS an All-Star closer

Maybe that's not the best way to judge these things, but you can't deny that the guy did make an All-Star team, racked up 37 saves one year, and generally earned that moniker.
And he actually said that he liked Thames, and that Chavez was best not spoken of, not the other way around.
What's your contention with the categorizations?
~G

I'm lamenting Morrow.

Lamenting that he got drafted ahead of Lincecum, Kershaw and Scherzer.
And I'm lamenting that Clement isn't Ryan Zimmerman, Ryan Braun, or Troy Tulowitzki.
Seriously, how bad where those two choices? Unforgivable if you ask me.
Bad at the time, bad in retrospect.

It's all kind of tiring

We could have done so many things better by a bit or more...and ended up with Bavasi longer! Then Zduriencik may have gotten another GM opportunity before the M's seat opened and the M's end up with a different front office that is worse overall and are not in as good of a position in any way. It could have happenned...All pick #s would have been different with a few things changing and with each of those small changes the differences between now and "what if" become increasingly unguessable.
I'm happy with where we're at. It took going through ALL of those things to get here. I'll take the Bedard trade as the final straw to replacing Bavasi's guys with Zdurienciks. Stones piece the other day about ex-Mariners killed me until I realised something. Add up all of Bills bumbles in one column and compare to the Zduriencik/McNamara drafts in another. It seems to me the talent has already been more than replaced, so the result of Bavasi's horrid deals is actually a net positive. We are here BECAUSE of All the things that happenned before, not just in spite of them.
05 and 06 sucked...09 is looking phenomenal and all others since are looking at least good. We wouldn't have 09-13 drafts if previous crews had been more adept in drafting, so I'll just keep being happy that Bavasi did as he did. We could be in the middle of a long rebuild(9+ years) instead of seeing light now that is a possible playoff core for years to come. Thanks, Bavasi, we're happy you sent us running to the capable arms of Jack and Tom.

No argument there

The Clement and Morrow picks were daggers to the soul of this franchise. If we add Tulo and Kershaw instead, how much different would our fate have been? Or course, we'd have Bavasi at the helm longer. There's a reason he got fired.
I don't normally do the "what if" game with picks, unless it's obvious. Drafting Clement in front of that raft of hitting talent, when he was rated as a late-first rounder earlier in the week, was absurd. Drafting the starter with a diabetes-related stamina problem ahead of the local arm or the teen phenom or the giant college kid is similarly tough to swallow. And again, both were at the time.
But lamenting the Morrow-to-Toronto trade as some kind of plague-carrier that's demolished our competitive spirit since simply isn't true. Morrow's had a decent career (7.7 WAR in 700 IP). Joe Saunders has 12 WAR in 1275 IP, but nobody would cry a river for half-a-decade if he wandered off tomorrow. It's just weird to me, how attached people are to the idea that Morrow is some kind of game changer. Maybe he will be in the second half of his career, or maybe he'll never throw another big-league pitch (let's hope his forearm thing really is "tendonitis" instead of "future TJ surgery.")
But through his entire club-controlled career, he hasn't been. If there's a Cliff Lee late-career resurgence in him as a starter, then congratulations to both him and the Blue Jays, but I wouldn't be betting on it. And in the meantime we had a closer to bridge the gap til our minor league arms could start pulling the duty, and then flipped that arm for a Rafael Soriano position-conversion closer with Jeff Nelson stuff (Bawcom).
If that's losing, not even a draw but losing, then I wanna know what winning looks like.
~G

Fun to watch

I enjoy watching pitchers that can generate wicked spin on their pitches. Trying to harness that talent may be a different story altogether though. He threw some pitches that could really bug your eyes out.
He's the kind of guy that could hold steady with a 4.5 ERA and then come at you with a perfect game at any time.
No doubt he was totally mishandled.

And yet Clement looked like a real prospect in AAA

.867 OPS as a 23 year old, with 20 HRs and 35 doubles. Very Zunino-like. Clement was on the track to a very successful career. Not sure what happened, but hindsight is 20/20. And Morrow, well, he had a whole 3 innings in the Cal league to prepare him for high leverage work in the big leagues. These were two very good prospects. They just didn't work out.

Clement was a catcher who couldn't catch

But whose bat was supposed to carry him. Kinda like some other catcher we got from the Yankees. Quick, name me the catchers-who-can't-catch who succeeded in the bigs because of their lumber. Most of them had to be good enough to survive on a corner. Clement wasn't that good.
Clement was basically a stab at Ryan Doumit. In the second round, where Doumit was drafted, no problem. But you don't draft a guy without a position 3rd in the entire draft. If it was gonna work it would be because Clement could hit like Konerko so a move to first base would be okay. That was a very bad bet. Was it at the time? Yes. Could it have worked anyway? Absolutely.
But with Tulo, Braun and Zimmerman in the draft, why take that bet? At #23 or whatever, sure, swing away. Zimmerman was a guaranteed Gold Glover at 3B who was being mentioned as a SS or 2B conversion if a team wanted, he was so good with the glove. Oh yeah, and he'd hit from day one. Clement was a stone-fisted catcher with terrible footwork and defensive instincts who had a chest like a water buffalo and could hit a ball a mile with an aluminum bat.
He was slow, had a low average in college (for the pre-BBCOR bats of the time) until a decent junior season, had a good eye but only power was his special tool. It was special for a catcher, though, not overall. It's not like he was Ryan Braun. So positionally-great power potential for a player unlikely to stay on position? Yeesh.
Clement was a decent prospect if you're talking top-50 yes, but not top-5. So drafting him top-5 is a huge mistake.
Brandon Morrow had ONE year as a starter in college, with a diabetes issue and a walks problem that would take years to try to straighten out. It's like drafting James Paxton #5 overall. I like James - I am a Paxton fan for sure. But that would be a huge risk. High ceiling sure, but tough road to get there.
The whole point of high picks is being able to take major talents with a good chance to hit their ceilings. Isn't it? The Ms got rated down for doing that with Hultzen ("He's only a #3 arm" says Law) but seriously, the non-catching catcher and the diabetic starter with no starting history aren't good bets. They're long-shots.
Why are we taking longshots with those picks?
If we had some Seagers to make up for the delays in the Ackleys, maybe I wouldn't have so much animosity toward those Bavasi drafts. But we don't have them from those drafts. They were devoid of talent, even later round players to make up for early round mistakes.
Ackley and Seager, so far, have more WAR than EVERY BAVASI PICK COMBINED - except Fister.
I'm thankful every day that the Bavasi FO is no more.
~G

Wow! Nice catch Gordo

*Ackley and Seager, so far, have more WAR than EVERY BAVASI PICK COMBINED - except Fister.*
Hard to imagine, especially since the Bavasi guys have had an extra 5 years to generate data.
Mentioning Fister, though, made me wonder if Ms fans are collectively over-reaching on their perception of how good Fister is (and has been).
Yes ... he is a good pitcher. But, I suspect that because he had that really good run right after he was traded, the Seattle view of Fister might be a bit inflated.
I think the perception is that he's *much* better than Vargas, when in truth, they are much closer together statistically than most might realize.
The comp from 2010 - 2013 (by WAR)
Year - Vargas - Fister
2010 - 2.5 -- 1.2
2011 - 0.9 -- 5.2
2012 - 3.1 -- 3.3
2013 - 1.8 -- 1.6
That 2011 season includes the 2.5 WAR Fister generated in that great 70 inning spree immediately after landing in Tiger town.
Mind you, Fister avoided the early career growing pains (negative WAR), and hasn't had the *bad year* that Vargas had in 2011, (instead having the career year). Fister is a better pitcher in the aggregate. But, outside of that one 2011 season, the two are incredibly close by practically any statistical yardstick. Obviously, *IF* Fister manages to put together another 2011 at some point, the delta increases dramatically. And any 3.0 WAR per year pitcher is a really, really nice commodity to have. But, Fister has not turned into Felix ... he's more like Vargas+.

Agree, and not being nitpicky ...

I've made the exact same commentary as Gordon.
I will just point out that Bavasi's crew did pick Michael Saunders, and is still responsible for Brandon Maurer and Bobby LaFromboise, who may end up with some value. Just to be fair.
But the complete lack of "pipeline" when Z came in has made his job twice as hard. He successfully created some "pipeline" of his own in the Putz trade, but then bombed when trying to create some more in the Fister deal.
[The Fister deal must be understood as an attempt to create high-minors "pipeline" where there was virtually none.]

Top flops, plus lack of "mid-majors"

I call the second half of the first round through Round 3 "mid-majors." If you grab the ones that make it to the Sweet 16, you've got a winning bracket. Jack and Mac already have Seager, Franklin, Miller, Walker, Capps, Diaz, Pike, Wilson and O'Neill from that category. That's an Elite Eight plus a Tank.
One of these days, I've been planning to compare that to other teams. They also drafted Ryne Stanek and Kevin Cron in that portion of the draft. Stanek went in the first round this year and Cron will probably go in the first round next year.
For the Bavasi crew, it was the lethal combination of failed high picks and the complete lack of "mid-majors" (let alone "longshots" -- except for Saunders and Fister; maybe Maurer) that was so brutal.
And it's also fair to point out that the Gillick crew did not leave a "pipeline" for Bavasi either.

Right, Vargas-plus... playing for nothing

The problem with trading Fister wasn't that he's an ace (he isn't) or that he's the second coming of Cliff Lee (unlikely) but rather that he's good and CHEAP.
We traded him with four+ years of club control left. He was still making $450k when he got moved. So it's not just the WAR, it's the WAR/$ that kills you. Yes, he's into arb now. He's making 4 mill this year, will be up to Saunders/Vargas figures next year, and then will still have one year of control left (if they don't just buy out his 2 remaining arb years after this season and throw in some extra FA years - I certainly would).
So far Detroit has paid less than 5 million bucks total to get what will be 9-ish WAR by the end of this season. That's the crime.
As you say, Sandy, rising contenders are built on the backs of club-controlled players. Coughing up a 3 WAR/year pitcher making peanuts in order to get some navel lint and a Sponge Bob lollipop in return is bad. It's just bad, and since there was no reason we had to do it, that makes it worse. Morrow was not any kind of undefensible mistake.
Fister was.
~G

The Gillick crew

picked Mike Garciaparra, soccer player, over David Wright, Captain America. No, they definitely were not helping things. Under Jack and Tom, the Mariners have done a great job at 3 things:
1) drafting high-quality bats in the first 3 rounds. Ackley, Seager, Franklin, Zunino and Miller are a fistful of hitting talent any team would like to have. The misses on Cron (unsignable) and Poythress (just never quite turned into a corner hitter) are completely understandable and were drafted in a place that doesn't hurt us. The same may be true of Austin Wilson, or maybe he'll be a monster, and DJ Peterson is starting his pro career off just fine. When they have hitters they want early, they're usually right.
2) Finding TOR arms. In '09 that wasn't the case (3 plus infielders in 4 picks is a worthy alternate plan) but every other year... Walker, Hultzen, Paxton and Stanek (didn't sign, but he was the right talent) are great arms. And we have teens who might also be in Diaz (throws 92-96, reworking his motion for incredibly increased accuracy) and Pike (unhittable, advanced pitcher, too many walks but is trying to find a Bedard path as he gets that curve under control to go with a nice sinker and change). We're hitting a LOT of marks here. It's kinda scary.
3) snagging a couple of good relievers in every draft. You'd think this would be easy, but a lot of teams can't do it. We have Capps, Pryor, Moran, Smith, Burgoon, Leone, Wood... add in a few potentials from this year and you get a self-sustaining pen offering a couple of new arms every year as grist for the mill.
But drafting the RIGHT hitters early, the high-upside arms when they're available, and the one-trick ponies for the pen who can immediately find their mark seems to be working out for us.
Easy, right?
~G

It's even worse. Fister's

It's even worse. Fister's 2012 was injury shortened which reduces his total WAR. While he's has a slowish start to 2013, I think his talent level is higher and is likely closer to being the 5 WAR pitcher than a 3 WAR pitcher.
Who would you rather have pitch a game in the playoffs against a great hitting team? I'll take Fister. Vargas can spin some great games on occasion when the CU is really working, but I think Fister is more consistently good.
If we had gotten something great back, well, then fine. But instead we have a wasted lotto ticket.

Clement & Morrow

I completely understand and agree with your philosophy regarding top draft picks. But it's hard to believe the Mariners didn't think Clement would stick behind the plate. I can't believe they picked him third overall in order to play first base. His whole value as such a high pick, #3, was based precisely on sticking behind the plate. They were drooling over a power hitting catcher.
Definitely the scouting and decision making was flawed. But both players moved fast and early - showing that the talent AT THAT TIME was real. It's not like either of those guys were languishing in the low/mid minors, like a Baron, a Poythress - or a Tito Nanni/Al Chambers. Or a Ryan Christiensen unable to succeed past high A. I guess all I'm saying is that early indications suggested these were two good picks.

However.....

Bavasi was famous for his 'theory' of aggressively pushing prospects up the ladder before they were ready (before they learned appropriate skills or consolidated them (owned them). His point was that he wanted to see them learn how to deal with failure before they reached the majors. I re4member arguments at the time of Clement having a big 'hole' in his swing in AAA, and of course, Morrow had no real time in the Minors.