f Morrow is a league average starter for his three non-Arb years, he’ll be a net $15M asset.

…for his nonarb years? What about his arb years? Those are still likely to be good deals for the M’s; as long as he’s not a FA.

Again if this was part of the Cliff Lee deal, or part of another deal to get some hard to get piece like a SP or a great hitter, OK, but for a reliever, I just am not sure if it works.

WAR / FA value / non-arb Salary : Value / arb-elig salary : value
0.5 / $2.25M / $0.5M : $1.75M / $1.0M : $1.25M
1.0 / $4.5M / $0.5M : $4.0M / $2.0M : $2.5M
1.5 / $6.75M / $0.5M : $6.25M / $3.0M : $3.75M
2.0 / $9.0M / $0.5M : 8.5M / $4.0M : $5.0M
2.5 / $11.25 / $0.5M : $10.75M / $5M : $6.25M
3.0 / $13.5M / $0.5M : $13.0M / $6.0M : $7.5M
Look at it this way. Set aside Brandon League for the moment and consider Yo Hermin alone. Suppose he’s a 0.5 WAR player for his non-arb years and a 1.0 WAR player for his arb years. He’d be a net $12.75 M asset while under club control. If Morrow is a league average starter for his three non-Arb years, he’ll be a net $15M asset. Not saying Chavez will be that – he’s a long way away, but his clock hasn’t started. Morrow’s is half-done, and he’s averaged less than 0.5 WAR per season (and most of that as a reliever).

I don’t know if this is accurate, for a few reasons.

Your 0.5 WAR historical for Morrow is potential misleading, because: (1) up to now, Morrow has been a reliever; relievers are generally less valuable than starters, (2) I said “I don’t like it when clubs give up on players” – meaning clubs that trade young players before giving them a chance to mature. A mature Morrow would not be a reliever; he would be a starter. Even a league average starter at less than $5M per year is quite valuable these days I would guess.

My point, I guess, was why trade a #5 overall pick with great stuff for a reliever? Sure, League is a great reliever, but he is a reliever nonetheless. Not that he’s not a valuable piece, but there may have been more creative (and less potentially costly) ways to add bullpen depth?

The other thing is, do you think, had Z drafted Morrow, Z would be so quick to get rid of him? No, I don’t think so – Z would’ve been much more likely to keep him. But because another GM drafted him, I think he was quicker to ship him off.

There’s likely a lot to this trade we’ll never appreciate. Maybe Z thinks Morrow is too freaked to succeed here, maybe there’s a chemistry issue, maybe Morrow is unhappy, maybe Z thinks Morrow’s potential isn’t really there and he’s dealing before other GM’s figure it out. Too many maybes.

We simply do not know. We can only guess. As it is, I think this trade looks okay on paper, but paper isn’t the end all be all of the game.

Dave’s having misgivings about trading a man whose flaws as a developing pitcher and longshot odds to self-actualize as a quality SP he made clear a long time ago.

I can understand the emotional reasons for fans to have those misgivings, but there are plenty of reasons why Morrow’s chances of becoming a good enough starting pitcher to make this deal look bad in hindsight are dim at best.

By the way, for those interested, here’s the all-time list of pitchers who accumulated at least 150 innings before age 25 and had a BB/9 of 5.5 or higher at that point in their career. Morrow’s is 5.83 right now, by the way.

61 pitchers on the list. The successes – Nolan Ryan, Johnny Van Der Meer, Lefty Grove, and J.R. Richard if you ignore the fact that his career was over at age 30.

That’s it. There are a bunch of Bobby Witt/Jason Bere/Seth McClung/Daniel Cabrera types, who just never figured it out.

4 out of 60. Do you like those odds?

This was a quote from an old post by Dave. I think it’s fair to say Dave isn’t Morrow’s biggest fan, yet, he still thinks it was a lopsided trade.

As for the “odds”, I think this comparison is a little better. BTW, Morrow makes this list if you use his career numbers or only his numbers as a starter. So, yeah, I do like those odds.

I think Jack simply didn’t want to begin next season assuming he’d have a bullpen ready for war in April.

I think you hit the nail on the head, Rick M. Whatever else you can say about him, Morrow’s ratio of management time to WAR was pretty high. Unless one thinks he will turn out to be the next Randy Johnson (and the trade indicates Zduriencik doesn’t), it’s not a totally unreasonable position to think that having someone you can rely on to fill a particular role on the roster from day one is an advantage if you’re moving all in for the 2010 season, rather than someone whose role seems to morph a couple of times every season. I’m not using that as a justification of the deal, but as an explanation, I think it fits the facts pretty well.

I would say record-wise Randy pitched more innings and had more decisions since he mostly started even in the early years, but ERA, ratio W/L, H/9, etc. are not that far from what Morrow was doing back then. The stats would not say that early Randy was better than early Morrow – stats just don’t back that up.

Well, W-L, ERA, and H/9 are not really quality statistics to compare pitchers on. K/9, BB/9 and FIP are better, since they focus on what the pitcher’s doing, rather than his fielders and run support. Also, I’m not sure Randy Johnson is a good guy to compare most pitchers to, since his height made his development significantly different than 99% of everyone else. With that kind of wingspan, control comes pretty slowly. Randy Johnson didn’t make it to the bigs until he was 24, and that year only pitched in 4 games (all starts, 1 CG, 26 IP). Really his 25 year old year was his first full season, while Morrow got started three years younger.

Plus, Johnson rarely did anything but start even his first few years, while Morrow has pitched 60% of his innings as a reliever so far. As Dave pointed out earlier in the thread, pitching from the bullpen improves results. Raw Randy had better stuff than Raw Brandon (compare FIPs and BB/9). So, Morrow can still develop into a quality starter, but he’s almost certainly not going to be in Randy Johnson’s class. His stats through age 24 compare more with someone like Jim Hannan (an average-minus starter who had a couple of good years but never even got close to 200 IP in any season), or Terry Adams (decent reliever who could swing into the rotation on occasion) or guys like Danys Baez and Bill Caudill, good relievers who never started a game after their early 20′s. Those guys aren’t his upside, they’re more like his median projection, and certainly not awful projections. But really, if he turns into Randy Johnson, lots of people will offer to eat their hats.

I hate it, just hate it, when teams give up on young players. Even if Morrow never becomes a great pitcher, he will be cheap, and so there is value in that alone

As far as “giving up too early”, non-Arb years are way more valuable than arb years, and Morrow is about out of his, so he’ll be cheap, but not cheap-cheap. Compare arb and non-arb eligible players by WAR (wins are worth about $4.5M/win on the FA market, Arb-eligible players seem to make about $2M/win, non-arb players make $0.5M regardless. Someone feel free to correct me if I’m wrong on any of these numbers):

WAR / FA value / non-arb Salary : Value / arb-elig salary : value
0.5 / $2.25M / $0.5M : $1.75M / $1.0M : $1.25M
1.0 / $4.5M / $0.5M : $4.0M / $2.0M : $2.5M
1.5 / $6.75M / $0.5M : $6.25M / $3.0M : $3.75M
2.0 / $9.0M / $0.5M : 8.5M / $4.0M : $5.0M
2.5 / $11.25 / $0.5M : $10.75M / $5M : $6.25M
3.0 / $13.5M / $0.5M : $13.0M / $6.0M : $7.5M

Look at it this way. Set aside Brandon League for the moment and consider Yo Hermin alone. Suppose he’s a 0.5 WAR player for his non-arb years and a 1.0 WAR player for his arb years. He’d be a net $12.75 M asset while under club control. If Morrow is a league average starter for his three non-Arb years, he’ll be a net $15M asset. Not saying Chavez will be that – he’s a long way away, but his clock hasn’t started. Morrow’s is half-done, and he’s averaged less than 0.5 WAR per season (and most of that as a reliever).

It was the same reason Bavasi and Hargrove put Morrow in the pen the first time – panic over bullpen options leaving ST.

I think Jack simply didn’t want to begin next season assuming he’d have a bullpen ready for war in April. And I think GMs feel much better going to war with a weak 4 and 5 starter than they do about a shaky bullpen. Given the choice of a solid 1-3 and solid bullpen, or a solid 1-3 with upside with 4 and 5 but a shaky bullpen, my guess is most GM’s of a team whose goal is to win a World Series will take the former.

And remember, Jack told us rather emphatically that day as well that their goal was to win a World Series.