Mike Hargrove is Delusional
The Brandon Morrow issue continues to be the only noteworthy thing around. Today, John McGrath weighs in with some quotes from Bavasi and Hargrove.
“Originally, we were sending him down to the minors (to) start him,” general manager Bill Bavasi said. “If he makes the club in relief, it alters how you develop him as a starter.
“Now, we may have to look at something in the offseason – sending him to a half-season of winter ball, perhaps, and have him re-establish a third or fourth pitch there. But that would depend on how many innings he gets between spring training and the regular season.”
Good News – Bavasi isn’t yet pigeonholing Morrow as a reliever, talking about coming up with a plan to still attempt to develop him as a starter in other ways. Of course, the M’s paid this same lip service to Rafael Soriano as well, so it’s good news with a caveat.
When Hargrove considers the debate about assigning Morrow a big-league roster spot, he recalls the soul-searching once invested over a flaky Cleveland Indians prospect he wanted on his big-league team in 1994.
“Manny Ramirez,” Hargrove said. “He turned out OK. People called me an idiot then, too.”
Manny Ramirez’s minor league career before being called up to the Indians:
1991 – Burlington (rookie): .326/.426/.679 in 215 at-bats as a 19-year-old
1992 – Kinston (high-A): .278/.379/.502 in 291 at-bats as a 20-year-old
1993 – Akron (double-A): .340/.414/.581 in 344 at-bats as a 21-year-old
1993 – Charlotte (triple-a): .317/.424/.690 in 145 at-bats as a 21-year-old
After his rookie league debut, he was named the #37 prospect in baseball. After dominating high-A ball, he moved up to #13. After destroying Double-A and Triple-A, Baseball America tabbed him as the seventh best prospect in baseball, one spot behind Alex Rodriguez.
By the time Hargrove plucked Ramirez out of the minors, he was well known to every person in the game as an elite talent and had dominated every level of minor league baseball over a three year span.
Yea, that’s the same thing we’re doing with Morrow.
Head versus heart. Caution versus impulse.
It wasn’t supposed to be this complicated.
It’s not. Every other organization in baseball has already farmed out their big armed elite pitching prospect to help get them more development time and allow them to make the show when they’re ready. Only the Mariners are so swayed by 8 innings of exhibition work that they’d overhaul their development plan at the whim of a manager whose usefulness has long since expired.
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“Dillusional”? Is this youth slang? Is ‘Delusional’ staid, or insufficient to convey how not right Hargrove is?
Anyway, are you hearing anything more about this either way? Is Morrow breaking camp with the team, or did his 1 inning of trouble help the hand of those who’ve been pushing for him to start in the minors? (Yes, I’m fully aware that basing a decision like this on one bad inning is utterly dumb, but so is basing the opposite on 7 innings).
Typo fixed.
He’s going to make the team, barring some sort of meltdown in the next 48 hours.
so if he makes the team, who doesn’t? will the bullpen be: mateo, reitsma, morrow, rhodes, woods, sherril, putz?
would they throw white away? he’s looked decent enough to keep around and let morrow go to the minors…
I don’t blame Bavasi or Hargrove on this. It’s all on the Front Office and their idiotic “Hot Seat” threat last year. You put your Manager and GM in a lose or die situation, the future no longer matters. If I was Grover, I would do the same thing, nuts to the future, I don’t have one if I lose. I said yesterday that I was mixed about it also, just so sick of losing. You are correct, it is bad, bad, bad but they cannot afford to care. Thanks Howie.
They’ll probably try to work something out with the Braves if White clears waivers.
“Win or die”, cripes
#1 – you know what they say, you can’t spell ‘dillusional’ without ‘ill’, as in how Hargrove makes us feel.
And the pit in my stomach grows deeper…
Don’t pull your punches, Dave. Tell us how you really feel.
Yeah, but Morrow also had a very successful college career–isn’t that sort of the equivalent of Ramirez’ huge years in the minors?
Eight innings means NOTHING. He could be the best pitcher in history; he could be the worst. There are no data points, because eight innings IS NOT DATA. The likelihood of big-league success after eight innings of 1.08 ball is exactly the same as it is for eight innings of 108.00 ball, especially in spring.
The P-I’s not helping with their huge “His future is now” headline and “numbers” highlight. Those aren’t numbers, though. They’re meaningless.
What matters is his development. Which is worse: he makes the club and excels in relief, which hurts his development as a starter? Or bombing, and getting sent back down after the first week? Or, most likely, a little bit of each, inconclusive, and his career slowly withers into a wasted, unexciting middle-relief job for a couple of years, with the complaints about his “wasted potential” growing louder, until finally a real baseball team takes him off our hands in exchange for a 40-year-old backup catcher, where he promptly responds by turning into a real pitcher?
On the other hand, is it possible that his college career can stand in for the minor-league starting career, and this is just his normal Earl-Weaverish middle-relief introductory phase, moved up in terms of professional seasons but not really in age? That would be nice. That would also be dependent on having Earl Weaver in the dugout instead of Mike Hargrove, but Weaver’s been retired for 20 years.
I think I’m rooting for a couple of bad innings and a quick send-down, followed by a year of starting in AA or AAA.
Is there any way we can move Ho-Ram into garbage relief instead?
It’s not even so much the Morrow thing that bothers me as much as it is how much power the front office has ceded to Mike Hargrove. That he’s able to successfully lobby for something like this is absurd. We’ve talked about how nice a guy Bavasi is, and how loyal he is to his employees, but at some point, he’s got to act like a boss for once.
I wouldn’t say Morrow had a “very successful” college career; he made 24 starts, had one good season, and flashed a ton of potential.
Yeah, but Morrow also had a very successful college career–isn’t that sort of the equivalent of Ramirez’ huge years in the minors?
Morrow was terrible his freshman and sophomore years. He had a very successful junior season.
And no, 14 good college starts are not the equivalent of three years of destroying every level of professional baseball.
And his first two college seasons were pretty crummy.
McGrath even references Andrew Miller
I hate Mike Hargrove.
I know that a fan saying as such isn’t that tremendous a development, but the statement bears repeating.
Like Dave said in the game thread last night, why don’t we just put Jones and Clement on the Seattle bench while we’re at it, too.
There’s no reason why we can’t stick White in the relief role, and let Morrow season in AA/AAA. None.
Hooray! Now *this* is the USSM I know and love!
Dave, do you think this big-league move with Morrow, should it come to pass, is an act of desperate men? I figure Hargrove, at least, is playing a 40-game schedule. This would get them to the mid-May homestand with the Yankees, Angels, and Padres.
12-Maybe Bavasi agrees with Grover, who knows. There is an idea that you can find phenoms in ST. Talent that you didn’t expect and occasionally lightning does strike. I suspect they think they have one and coupled with the fast start idea to save jobs, they’ll go for it.
katal said:
This is especially true if you remember/go back and read the stuff about why they liked White enough to pick him up in the Rule 5 draft – lots of things said about how he picked up power/velocity recently, etc. While he doesn’t have Morrow’s stuff, he can succeed in the role they’re thinking of handing to Morrow. And, while White is also new to relief, it won’t come at the expense of throwing a potential dominant starter’s development into a minimum two-year delay (if he recovers at all…). I can’t believe there are people still arguing for Morrow to make the team. It is a DUMB idea.
What is the latest word on J.J. Putz? Is he available to close at the start of the season? If not, any chance that Morrow could find himself occupying the closer role within a month or so? Second coming of H. Street?
Putz says he is ready; he throws today and friday, incorporating the slider, so I guess we shall see after that.
It’s not even so much the Morrow thing that bothers me as much as it is how much power the front office has ceded to Mike Hargrove. That he’s able to successfully lobby for something like this is absurd. We’ve talked about how nice a guy Bavasi is, and how loyal he is to his employees, but at some point, he’s got to act like a boss for once.
It’s not surprising, though, considering the Carl Everett “we need a veteran hitter” fiasco. I’d also guess the Snelling/Soriano moves were done with his tacit endorsement.
There’s just a boatload of factors at work here atop that, too:
- Morrow actually performing pretty well
- Soriano being gone + Lowe being injured + Putz and Rhodes being achy and not pitching much in the spring = perceived power arm deficit in the bullpen
- Lowe’s performance last year making the team think plugging in a 22 year old RHP with a flamethrower arm in the bullpen worked then, so it will work now (ignoring that Lowe had MUCH more minor league experience, and pretty clearly was on the JJ Putz career path of failed starter, whereas Morrow is nowhere near proving that)
- Bavasi’s tendency to aggressively promote anyway
- organizational panic that there will be a lot of pink slips in a few months if the team doesn’t perform well
This all adds up to a pretty toxic witches’ brew of justifications for a short-term decision for 2007 that could have a lot of long term backfire long past the days where Bavasi and Hargrove are gone…
Ugh. Say this isn’t true. They can’t be stupid enough to completely ignore sample size, can they? Oh wait, I forgot what team I was talking about.
Even Joel Pineiro had a string of 5 consecutive relief appearances for the BoSox without letting up a run. Spring training stats mean next-to-nothing.
Like Dave said in the game thread last night, why don’t we just put Jones and Clement on the Seattle bench while we’re at it, too.
Because Rene Rivera is hitting better than Clement in ST. And Willie Bloomquist is hitting better than Adam Jones…
Here is a great quote from Doug Melvin(Brewers GM) on the issueLink
Hargrove really is delusional. I doubt anyone was calling him an idiot for wanting to put Ramirez — who had hit roughly .330/.420/.600 the year before — on the roster.
Oh yeah…
Of course, the M’s paid this same lip service to Rafael Soriano as well, so it’s good news with a caveat.
Yeah- of Soriano’s last 14 minor league starts, it doesn’t look like he was allowed to go very long. For a guy with a minor league ERA UNDER 3, you’d think an organization as desperate for ANY decent starter as the M’s were would be willing to give starting Soriano a shot.
I also think doing a winter ball conversion from reliever to starter is nuts, given the relative lack of supervision and temptation to win first in winter ball. If I were doing it, what I’d likely do is start stretching Morrow out in September once rosters expand to 40, as if he was in spring training, while limiting his availability outside of his long relief appearances/bullpen sessions, and (assuming there’s no postseason), send him to the AFL to start. Then shut him down when the league’s over in November, let his rest up, and then bring him in as a starter. I’m of the firm belief that throwing a baseball 90+ MPH is incredibly destructive to normal or even extraordinary human arms, so overworking guys who haven’t shown “rubber arm” is a real problem.
#5 — Dave, is there anything sidebar to the Soriano-Ramirez deal that would allow the M’s to put White in Tacoma? Did the Braves give an unofficial nod to the M’s that they would be OK with such a move? Given Soriano’s performance, Atlanta should take a little pity on the M’s.
Another question to anyone out there. If Huber and/or Green had been equally as effective as Morrow, would Bavasi put his foot down and tell Grover that Morrow starts in the minors and that one of those righties will end up rounding out the bullpen?
By the way, I have also been of the mind that Hargrove has had and continues to have too much influence in roster construction.
to my understanding, if white doesn’t stay on the roster all year, he is offered back to the braves for what we paid for him…if they don’t want him back, then i don’t know what happens…anyone?
Speaking of “meaningless” spring training stats. Soriano this spring…
8 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 0 BB, 12 K
Boy he looks like he’s done. But hey, Ramirez has a nifty little 2.92 ERA this spring (ignore that 1:1 K to BB ratio).
Man I hate that trade.
Dave, is there anything sidebar to the Soriano-Ramirez deal that would allow the M’s to put White in Tacoma?
That’s assuming, of course, that White clears waivers. Wouldn’t he need to be placed on waivers, first, since he’s out of options?
#5 — Dave, is there anything sidebar to the Soriano-Ramirez deal that would allow the M’s to put White in Tacoma? Did the Braves give an unofficial nod to the M’s that they would be OK with such a move? Given Soriano’s performance, Atlanta should take a little pity on the M’s.
No. The Mariners actually acquired White from Pittsburgh, not Atlanta, as the Pirates selected White in the Rule 5 draft then sold him to the M’s.
Another question to anyone out there. If Huber and/or Green had been equally as effective as Morrow, would Bavasi put his foot down and tell Grover that Morrow starts in the minors and that one of those righties will end up rounding out the bullpen?
If Huber, Green, or Reitsma had pitched well, this probably would have been a non-issue, most likely.
to my understanding, if white doesn’t stay on the roster all year, he is offered back to the braves for what we paid for him…if they don’t want him back, then i don’t know what happens…anyone?
If the M’s decide not to carry White, he has to be placed on waivers. If every team in baseball passes on him, then the M’s have to offer him back to the Braves for $25,000. If the Braves decide they’d rather have the cash, the M’s can then option White to the minors. If the Braves decide they want White back, then the M’s would either lose him or make a trade for him.
Sample size as a decision factor is intuitive to data analysts. Sample size is not an intuitive decision factor to the “old school” guys for a very simple, well-argued reason: intuitive feel for the “reason” for the small-sample size success. The old school, “scout” method looks at a player’s observable talents to say that the 0.26 ERA was because that player had tools. He throws hard; his pitches have movement; he is mechanically sound and can repeat his power and movement over and over again without injury; he is big enough to hold up over a given amount of innings.
The sabermetric counter to this argument will get nowhere unless the data is correlated to the physical makeup of the sample pool. Unless we can correlate all the Mark Lowes, all the King Felixes, and all the Morrows performance data to their physical makeup, then we are not going to convince the old school that the data has meaning. To the old school, every exceptional talent (evaluated subjectively, of course) is the sample outlier.
I’m facing a similar problem at work. My bosses are two guys that built a company up from scratch, working their butts off to do it, but working without any of the productivity tools that empower this industry. Now they have grown to a point where information management is critical. They need the best information, but they don’t have the skills to generate that info themselves, and they are extremely reluctant to hand off responsibility for decision making to anyone else, or to trust the information that their staff provides. The info is statistical – it is computer generated using language they don’t understand. They are builders, and the cost data, the performance data, the schedule data, etc., is simply outside their comfort level. In order for this data to become institutionalized as fundamental to the decision criteria, they would either have to learn it, or relinquish direct control. Neither is going to happen without a compelling reason because they are making the one benchmark they truly understand: 10% net on 20 mil gross. Never mind that they made just as much money on 20M last year as they did on 12M the year before, they are still making money on every project, and barring a catastrophe, they will not do the right thing and optimize their systems for greater profit. It isn’t in their culture. Not yet, anyhow.
Damn if I don’t see the M’s in my little corporate world.
thanks dave…i hope they keep him and send morrow down…but i think i’m going to be as dissapointed in that as i will be in rivera as the back-up instead of burke…oh well…
hmm. I think Mike really IS delusional. From the Plain Dealer, March 31, 1994:
I’ve heard the Braves would likely decline to make a deal for White, and at least ask for more than Seattle is likley to give up.
Dave,
If a team claims White off waivers do the same “Rule 5″ guidelines apply to the new team — that they have to keep him on their active roster the entire season? Or are they given a clean slate to work with?
Nice find msb. I wonder if there is a reporter with balls enough to call Hargrove on his revisionist history.
Or boobs enough. Let’s not call me sexist.
If a team claims White off waivers do the same “Rule 5″ guidelines apply to the new team — that they have to keep him on their active roster the entire season? Or are they given a clean slate to work with?
A guy picked in the Rule 5 draft is bound by the rules for the entire season, no matter which roster he ends up on, until he’s offered back to his original team.
and from the next day:
sorry– even with trimming, that was a lot longer than I realized …
Like Dave said in the game thread last night, why don’t we just put Jones and Clement on the Seattle bench while we’re at it, too.
Preposterous. Why would we let prospects have spots on the bench that rightly belong to M’s superstars Willie Bloomquist and Rene Rivera?
Too late to post this in yesterday’s Dave v Corco debate, but has it been noted here that David Cameron will be the British Prime Minister in 2009?
I’ve said all along that there is an articulate argument that can be made for carrying Morrow.
Here it is.
By the way, I have also been of the mind that Hargrove has had and continues to have too much influence in roster construction.
You want the field manager to have influence. The problem in this case is that the manager is Hargrove, and he’s clueless.
I wonder if there is a reporter with balls enough to call Hargrove on his revisionist history.
I suggest we all email this to all the appropriate reporters (msb, is there an actual link for those stories, or are you typing those quotes in by hand?) My bet would be Baker, if anybody, would mention it. But probably not to Hargrove, just on his blog.
Or boobs enough. Let’s not call me sexist.
See, that’s why I used huevos: idiomatically/euphemistically it means “balls” but literally it means “eggs” so it works for both.
What effect does promoting Morrow now have on his future arbitration and free agent eligibility years? If we leave him on the roster for the entire season as a reliever, doesn’t that potentially waste a year that we could have him as a “cheap” starter down the road.
Yes, carrying him all year as a reliever gives him a full year of service time, and assuming he stayed in the majors thereafter, he’d be arb. eligible after 2009 and free agent eligible after 2012. If he was promoted in June, he’d be arb. eligible in 2010 and free agent eligible in 2013.
There’s also the matter of a 40 man roster spot that the team would have to open up for him, and the option year that they’d have to burn to send him back to the minors if he struggled.
#48– the links would be via LexisNexis, which in theory could be accessed by most newsrooms; the Plain Dealer itself has a paid archive.
IT’S NOT UP FOR DEBATE HARGROVE SAYS IT’S HIS CALL IN RIGHT
PAUL HOYNES PLAIN DEALER REPORTER; The Plain Dealer; Mar 31, 1994
AND IN RIGHT FIELD – RAMIREZ AMARO WAIVED, KIRBY BENCHED AS ROOKIE WINS STARTING JOB
PAUL HOYNES PLAIN DEALER REPORTER; The Plain Dealer; Apr 1, 1994
I’m skeptical that option years are going to be much of an issue for Morrow down the road. Unless he turns into a spectacular bust, he’s not going to be shipping back and forth between AAA and the Majors in 2009.
Or he gets hurt and needs to spend a couple years in the minors working his way back from surgery. Which has been known to happen.
Yeah, well. Um.
Were I more comfortable with option years as a topic of discussion I could probably offer some kind of response to that.
Well, the option year thing is a minor point in this whole deal. It shouldn’t be a deciding factor, really. On the list of things that should matter, it’s about 13th.
Baker on the rotation, in his blog today
I think it would be an interesting study to determine just how roster decisions are made in spring training — whether the manager is the tail that wags the front office dog, or vice versa. I read these stories about Hargrove getting the final say, and then I chuckle to think of a manager trying to get his way with, say, Billy Beane.
Nice work on the post, Jeff. I’ve considered both yours and Dave’s take on this. I am not 100% sure what I think. If Morrow is blowing folks away with his potential, and we are not really talking about him making the difference between a play-off appearance and getting us a World Series trip this year, how can we take this risk for a guy we think should start in a year that everything needs to go right for the M’s make a legitimate run?
I am looking at it from the return potential here. If the M’s can get closer to a rotation with a polished Felix and a confident Morrow by having him get going in the minors, I think we go that route.
Why risk a prospect’s future to cover over off-season errors if we are crossing our fingers that the M’s are even competitive this year? Mid-season if Morrow is tearing it up, and we need just a little something to kick-start the team that looks like they can take it all (not holding breath there), I’m all for it. However, I think we should be developing Morrow in a fashion that will help the team compete for years to come, not to paint a pinstripe on a shitty winter.
Sure, he may help this season if things go right, but how much potential does this team really have with or without him? If we are very unlikely to make a world series run with this group, why play the limited return/high risk game now with a guy that may give us a real rotation someday?
How could you do such a study? Without being able to survey front offices and get honest answers, I don’t see how you’d be able to get useful data
Is it just me, or are some of the relievers who were competing for the last bullpen spot who are actually better than some of the people being touted as making the club for certain?
The reason this is phrased as a question is because I am not very familiar with a couple of them.
Mateo for instance?
This is one of the best posts you’ve made Dave. I wish someone important would read it and overrule any decision to keep Morrow on the big league staff…
P.S. There’s a pretty good Red Sox documentary on the IFC right now…
Somewhere someone suggested that the Mariners send Morrow down to AAA to develop as a starter, then bring him back up, possibly as a set-up guy or middle reliever, in July if the Mariners are in the race.
That would seem to be an intelligent compromise. As a middle reliever his presence from the beginning of the season wouldn’t put the Mariners in contention if they’re otherwise bad or keep them from being in contention if they’re otherwise bad.
RE #63: the end of that last sentence should read “if they’re otherwise good.”
you know, if Morrow went to AA, his pitching coach would be Brad Holman, who also recommended the Ms get Sean White, and who will be on KOMO tonight, although probably not being asked about any of those things.
Rizzs is very excited by the Rainiers vs Fresno Grizzlies game that has broken out.
Yeah, it was pretty entertaining listening to a comeback inning where just about every player makes you go “uh, who?” Bloomquist, Morse, Jones, and Rivera… there’s your team of destiny.
Jeff Nelson has become the radio voice to call for Everyday Player Willie, on the Learn Baseball Cliches with Jeff & Willie currently on KJR.