The odds are prohibitively high against EVERY high draft pick having a great MLB career (and having a stretch where you’re a legitimate 1-2 is a great career). To put this another way: here’s the 1990 first round draft:

http://www.thebaseballcube.com/draft/1990_1_1.shtml

Look at the P’s on it- you have one outstanding one (Mussina) drafted 20th, one who had a decent career that ended at age 31 due to injury (Alex Fernandez), and a bunch of guys like Steve Karsay, Todd van Poppel and Lance Dickson.

Here’s the 1995 draft, as another example:

http://www.thebaseballcube.com/draft/1995_1_1.shtml

Better, but you still have your Jonathan Johnsons, Ariel Prietos and Mike Drumrights.

So a career as a very, very good reliever is nothing to sneer at, if that is what Morrow goes on to have. Very good relievers aren’t as good as very good starters, but they are sure a lot better than mediocre starters, or guys who wash out in minor league ball- and not all first round draft choices will pan out.

That being said… I still basically agree with Dave. You should try and get a better idea of what Morrow’s ceiling is as a starter in the minors before putting him into the bullpen.

So this was another Carlos Guillen trade then. Someone had a hissy fit, so we gave away a talented player for next to nothing.

Hey, he didn’t carry himself like a baseball player or acted like a baseball player should—he took care of himself after an injury.

naturally, this irks the hidebound management….

And yes, Grover’s displeasure with Soriano’s unavailability last year had a lot more to do with this trade than was reported.

So this was another Carlos Guillen trade then. Someone had a hissy fit, so we gave away a talented player for next to nothing.

Dave pretty much has it correct – that he was traded based on the team’s belief that he was a huge injury risk and that they were annoyed with his unavailability at times. However, in response to the second point, think about it from Soriano’s point-of-view. Many pitchers tend to hide small injuries/soreness because they don’t want to be labeled as injury-prone. While Soriano’s eventual Tommy John surgery may have happened regardless, he sometimes wonders if it may have turned out differently had he taken it easier at the first notice of discomfort and let the team handle it accordingly. Unfortunately, he thought it was something that would just go away, that obviously didn’t.

So going into the 2006 season, Soriano wasn’t about to take any chances, coming off the surgery. After Hargrove’s overuse in the first half of the season (for a guy just coming off a pretty major surgery), eventually Soriano began to tire as would be expected. Rather than just pitch through it, he chose to basically self-monitor himself and let the team know on days he didn’t feel right. Obviously, this irked management quite a bit, as can be seen when you see some of the quotes regarding Reitsma and his “wanting to pitch every day” comments. Nonetheless, I’m not sure you can really blame Soriano for approaching it this way, especially considering if given the chance, Hargrove might have thrown him out there every day if he could have.

Lastly, I’ve been in Orlando watching Soriano pitch this Spring and he’s looked great consistently hitting 93-95 giving up just 1 run and 3 hits in 6 innings to go along with a 8/0 k/bb ratio.

Couldn’t he still go to winter ball in the fall and get some starts there? And wouldn’t that do as much for his career as a month or two in AA early in the season?

I’m not saying I think he should make the team — he shouldn’t, he’s pitched a total of 16 professional innings, and even in college he was really only effective and starting regularly in 2006; in 2004 and 2005 combined he started 10 games and pitched 54 innings total in two years.

But my objection isn’t that it will set his career back; it’s that even if he’s been terrific in a few spring training innings I don’t think he’s likely to be an effective pitcher yet, given how little he’s pitched.

This team needs some luck to win much of anything anyway. That, as much as anything, seems like a good reason to me to hold off on bringing Morrow north to man the bullpen. Wait a couple of months and see where the team is at. If they’ve had some things go their way, and they look like they can make something of this season, then put Morrow in the bullpen for a while. If, on the other hand, things have gone poorly for the M’s, and they are 10-11 games back in June, then just let the kid keep starting games in the minors.

Bryan Harvey is a decent point, but he pitched several years before his arm was chewed up, and retired after his age 32 season; it wasn’t like he had one good year and was done (a la Mark Fidrych, or something).
I think it’s tough to devine a pattern in any of this: PITCHERS, not starters or reliever, often break down after X number of years/innings and become ineffective. I don’t think relieving is any more ‘dangerous’ for a pitcher’s long-term health than starting.

I’m actually with you in that I often wonder how much he has in the tank – I was worried that he never really regained ALL of his velocity after the TJ surgery, but it’s not like that prevented him from being effective. Still, I wondered if perhaps there weren’t other structural problems in his arm that the surgery didn’t correct that meant his old 98MPH, blowing past Nomar FB was down to a still impressive 94-with-deception. I guess we’ll see. I would say that it’s generally bad to make trades based on hunches and gut feelings, especially when the guy you’re getting in return has been injured so often. Having a gut feeling about how much a guy has left in the tank, combined with a gut feeling that Horacio’s gonna get everything worked out if he just got a change of scenery = baaad trade.