U.S.S. Mariner

Mr. Cashman,

You really should have traded for Jarrod Washburn. Since you failed to do so, we have had to see fit to strike down both Joba Chamberlain and now Andy Pettitte after we already took out Chien-Ming Wang and Philip Hughes earlier this year. Your starting rotation is now Mike Mussina and four guys from an MTV reality show. You’re in a pennant race. You’re really going to throw Ian Kennedy, Dan Giese, and Alfredo Aceves this weekend?

I don’t think so. Claim Jarrod Washburn on waivers. We can’t make this any more obvious.

Signed,

The Baseball Gods.

Denard Span impressed the hell out of me this week.

Blackburn v Washburn. Early start.

Jarrod’s still here? Dammit.

So, now that the M’s have decided to stretch Morrow out and turn him back into a starter, it’s time to look at what we should expect to see when he gets back to Seattle and joins the rotation. Pitching out of the bullpen is totally different than starting, so it’s not quite as easy as just taking his relief performance and extrapolating that over six or seven innings of work. He’s going to have to pitch differently, and that will have an effect on his results.

First, off, the fastball velocity is going to go down. Right now, his average fastball is 96.3 MPH, but he’s able to throw max effort on every pitch without worrying about stamina. As a starter, he’s going to have to pace himself. Most hard throwers like Morrow lose between 1-3 MPH off their average fastball when they move to the rotation, so Morrow’s going to have to adjust to throwing a 93-95 fastball instead of a 95-97 MPH fastball. As a guy who pitches up in the zone, that extra velocity can make a difference, and he’ll have to realize that trying to blow everyone away with a four seam high fastball isn’t going to work.

Secondly, he’s going to have to reduce the amount of fastballs he throws in general. Right now, about 76% of all of his pitches are fastballs, and that’s just too high. The starters who throw that many fastballs are all sinker ball types (or Vincente Padilla, but he’s not the role model we’re looking for), and since Morrow’s fastball produces flyballs, he’s going to have to reduce the number he throws. This will be especially true against left-handers, where his change up will become a necessary pitch. Fastball/slider pitchers tend to really struggle against lefties, because both pitches move in on LHBs. To get them out with consistency, he’s going to have to trust his change-up and use it far more frequently.

Finally, he’s going to have to improve his command. It’s gotten significantly better than it was last year, but it’s still not good - he throws strikes about as often as Felix does, and I think we all have yelled at Felix to throw more strikes at some point or another. He won’t get the groundballs that Felix does, so that means fewer double plays, and the walks will be more of a problem. His command should improve some just by nature of not throwing as hard, but there needs to be improvement beyond that incremental step forward. Four seam fastball guys with bad command don’t generally become aces.

If he can make these adjustments, he should be able to be a solid #2 or #3 starter. His upside in the rotation is probably along the lines of Matt Cain. Certainly, the M’s have to hope that’s what he turns into, and if he reaches that potential, he’ll have quite a bit more value than he did as a late inning reliever. However, there are risks.

Injuries are obviously a concern. Morrow’s never handled any kind of real workload in his life, and they’re going to have to be very careful to not try and put too many innings on his arm too quickly. Realistically, he probably shouldn’t be allowed to throw more than 50-60 innings or so the rest of the year. If you assume he burns through 15 of those in Tacoma getting stretched out, that only leaves about 3-5 starts in Seattle before the best course of action is to just shut him down.

Bullpen to rotation conversions can work. Chad Billingsley, Adam Wainwright, Kelvim Escobar, Zach Greinke, and Joba Chamberlain all made the move successfully, but they all had significant minor league experience as starters. Morrow may take a little longer to know how to get batters out for six and seven inning stretches, and his arm isn’t as tested over full season of starting as the others were.

Patience and risk management will be key here. Don’t expect Morrow to come up and dominate. There’s a learning curve, but it’s one that the organization will be better off for having him go through.

If anyone has an explanation for why the M’s turned to Roy Corcoran in the 8th inning of a one run game when Sean Green hasn’t pitched since Saturday that doesn’t involve the word “injury”, I’d love to hear it.

Also, the media is going to whine like hell about the M’s blowing a lead because they optioned Morrow to Tacoma before Putz was all the way healthy. Ignore them - the team made the right decision.

– Coors Field feels in many ways like an earlier draft of Safeco Field. I don’t mean that all in a negative way — it shares many of the same cues and touches I’m so familiar with, and at the same time it’s clear that Safeco Field allowed them to do some of the same things (the walking-and-viewing concourse, communal rail-watching areas, fan views into the bullpens) in a different (and I’d say better) way
– beer is slightly cheaper
– while it is Coors Field, the good beer selection’s quite nice (they have Newcastle in bottles)
– Jill, after the game: “Wow, that was great. Is this what going to a real game’s like?”*
– the Nationals are so, so terrible
– at one point in the game, Ian Stewart, Garret Atkins, and ScottJeff Baker were all in the game, with Stewart playing the position they all once seemed doomed to logjam at
– most common jerseys spotted: Helton, Holliday, Tulowitzki
– Stubhub doesn’t always work out
– the scoreboard graphics look rough
– between innings they don’t go with videos so much as packed ads
– “Cotten-eyed Joe” plays here too. They go almost as nuts for it
– Hydro race replaced with hog race. Pigs ride Harleys. Footage looks like it’s being rendered on someone’s Ti-99/4a (it’s below the quality level of those creepy fox ads for home-base businesses)

Baker v Dickey. Sometimes in these posts, I point out how the M’s have hugely overpaid for a random talent, but here, Dickey’s the random talent. Considering the M’s got a Dickey/Silva talent for free or on a multi-year, $bazillion dollar deal, well, we should at least applaud the good value pickup as we cringe at the other future.

I can’t help myself: hot-cha-cha-chaaaaaaaaaa

Huzzah - it’s a year and a half too late, but Brandon Morrow is finally heading back to the minors to get ready for his future as a major league starting pitcher. Jared Wells takes his roster spot for the next few days, and then will go away when Ryan Rowland-Smith is recalled to take Miguel Batista’s spot in the rotation. Batista will move to the bullpen.

Nice to see this team finally looking towards 2009.

First, revel in the joy of not seeing Ibanez given an extension this spring, or as a distraction from the losing (back before we got numbed to it). At the start of the season I was sure it would happen, but here we are, debating if they’ll get draft picks out of him.

Anyway — Ibanez made $5.5m this year. If he heads to arbitration, he and the team get to face off for a one-year deal where they both make arguments about why he deserves $5m or $20m, and he walks off with one under contract for one of those offers. Unfortunately for the M’s, defense won’t make much of a difference in that hearing. So pick a number… say he comes out with $7m.

He can do better on the open market. Ibanez is 37, yes, but from 06 through now, he’s hitting .286/.351/.486. This year he’s at .284/.350/.472. Plus, he’s got a sterling reputation as a good clubhouse guy, a media-friendly face who always gives the post-game cliche.

Jose Guillen was younger, but got 3y/$36m for less. Or go back to 2006 — Frank Thomas got a 2y, $18m deal at 40. Or Aubrey Huff, who got a 3y, $20m deal in Houston. Carlos Lee got $100m! Heck, Luis Gonzalez was 40 and got $7m, Moises Alou was 42 and got $8.5m…. anyway. The outfielder shuffle this off-season could be ridiculous, and Ibanez could easily benefit hugely.

Ibanez will know that he’ll almost certainly get a better one-year offer on the open market than he could win in arbitration. But even if he couldn’t, what Ibanez is really going to want is a multi-year deal, and he might well get one. And as a free agent, he gets his pick of situations. If he wants out of Seattle’s losing, or if he’d prefer a more agreeable travel schedule, he can control that.

To accept arbitration, Ibanez has to decide that he’s willing to stick around for another year at all. And then he has to decide that any value he places on liking Seattle plus his agents’ best guess at what they can come out of arbitration is worth more than making more money and being able to pick his situation in free agency. And, further, he has to weigh the chances that the M’s, having taken him through arbitration, will cut him anyway, leaving him without team at some point in the off-season anyway (significantly richer, presumably), but with his options possibly quite reduced.

I’d put the odds seriously against it.

What if he accepts, the M’s lose arbitration, and they’re stuck with Ibanez for a year at, say, ten million (just a number)? They can either play him at DH, which wouldn’t be so bad, or release him and eat a chunk of the arbitration-awarded contract. Either way, that’s not such a terrible outcome.

If a team could pay that release number for a 50% chance at two good draft picks, the smart ones would all take it. At the actual chance Raul declines, almost every team would bet that money.

Take him to the end of the season, offer him arbitration, see what happens. It’s the right move.