The Morrow Lament
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.
~G