That "best pitch in baseball" thing ... I hope that they oversimplified it for public consumption. The fact that a given SECONDARY pitch posts a -5.00 run value in one season, that is a nice red flag, but if you are basing a Brandon Morrow-level trade on that ... growf. There are 100 reasons that a given secondary pitch might rack up great stats in a single year.
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You know and I know that the M's saw two things they are very good at seeing ... (1) a saber nicety, used in context no less, the C/100 value on the split, and (2) League's fearless makeup. That makeup thing is part of the reason we have Miller, Franklin, and Zunino right now, so I'm willing to take the good with the bad.
They missed the key point on League: his total lack of pitchability. (I wouldn't have seen that factor, pre-trade, either -- would you have?) I'd like to know why they missed that, just in a post-mortem chess type sense. Vargas and Iwakuma, they nailed because OF pitchability. (Did they nail it on Iwakuma?)
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Also: this may not be a fair question, but: are there any long-term closers with that sidearm, flat fastball and two pitches? The sidearm (flat) fastball seems like it could be a fatal flaw to me, especially vs LH as you say.
What I DID wonder, at the time of the trade was ... isn't this guy a Jeff Nelson, a guy who will have to face mostly righties? I wonder too how they missed that. If they did miss it.
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