The Bad of the Good
Mike Hargrove needed a win last night as he fights to quell the growing calls for his job. The team needed a win last night to keep the losing streak from becoming a repeat of the 2006 debacle. So, facing a bases loaded, one-out situation in a tie game, Brandon Morrow gave both Hargrove and his teammates a huge lift. His strikeouts of Ian Kinsler and Nelson Cruz took the game out of the Rangers hands. As he threw 97 MPH gas past one of the leagues hottest hitters, everyone in Seattle saw why the M’s decided to bring him north with the team out of spring training.
Those were the best pitches of Brandon Morrow’s young career. They may also have been the worst possible outcome for Brandon Morrow, Starting Pitcher. Last night’s performance was eerily similar to this game, which I have a vivid memory of. Derek and I were at this game, watching from his seats on the rail of the 300 level, when Rafael Soriano made his major league debut. Soriano then proceeded to blow away Red Sox hitters for three innings with little more than a 97 MPH four seam fastball. He looked unhittable coming out of the pen.
That was an image the Mariners never forgot – the unhittable reliever, Rafael Soriano. Despite significant success in the minors as a starting pitcher, Rafael Soriano was given 8 starts later that year, and after failing to repeat the dominance he showed in that initial relief appearance, he was then shifted back to the bullpen for the 2003 season. He never made another start for the Mariners.
Brandon Morrow made an impression last night. The people in the organization won’t soon forget the kid throwing 97 MPH fastballs right past Ian Kinsler. That impression isn’t going to go away anytime soon. Brandon Morrow’s success last night just bought himself a very short leash if he ever is moved back into the rotation in the future. The M’s have a strong bias towards shifting power arms to the bullpen and putting finesse pitchers in the rotation to begin with, and Morrow’s performance will simply enhance their belief that his stuff is going to be best suited to relief work.
Last night was a win for the Mariners in the short term, but it very well could have been a huge blow to Brandon Morrow’s career as a starting pitcher. If he never gets a real chance to pitch in the rotation again, you can point to last night as one of the primary reasons why.
How do we know we can’t convert right-handers into valuable left-handers until we try?
There are also tons and tons of MLB starters whose first MAJOR LEAGUE role was as a reliever.
Like Ogdenville and North Haverbrook!
Care to give us the name of any starting pitcher who has done what you are expecting Morrow to do? That is become a effective starting pitcher with almost no time in the minor leagues starting?
Jim Abbot Catfish Hunter
I agree that he has a lot to learn and that the best place to learn it is in the minor leagues. I wonder if his arm can survive being a starting pitcher, however. My elbow hurts watching him throw.
141. Sammy – Here here!
I was about to say the same things you said.
I haven’t run the numbers on this, but let’s say we couldn’t see the names next to the posts, but we had two statistics that accurately predict authors of this blog vs. non-authors:
CCA – Cogent, Carefully worded Arguments for a position percentage
RDFE – Respectful Disagreement backed up with Facts and Evidence percentage
I would think most non-author posters here would be slightly above replacement level, many well above and a few well below (and one weird outlier simply due to the sheer number of posts *cough*Corco*cough*). The authors would stand out like Babe Ruth’s OPS.
(Just so no one thinks I’m picking on them, I rate myself as one of the posters well below replacement level in all categories.)
Abbot and Hunter would the be the exceptions, would they not? Why would or should we or the M’s expect that Morrow is the exception rather than the rule. Furthermore, I am not as concerned about what will become of Morrow, but of the way the M’s are managed and run. Morrow is on the team to help them win now, yet last night was the first game in which he entered where he was in a position to help them win. I assume that he will see more of these roles, but the role he had been filling (anonymous bullpen guy who makes a rare appearance) could have been filled with a Sean Green. Morrow is making minimal contributions to the team, by choice of the manager that kept him on the team, and losing time to develop as a starter. Morrow’s use is symptomatic of enormous flaws within the M’s organization. Sure, one could look at the M’s as revolutionary and ahead of the curve in terms of player development and how they are handling Morrow, but does anyone actually think that Morrow is part of an organizational plan which the M’s have mapped out and which they believe will provide them with a current and future competitive advantage. I would go with door number two, desperation. By the way, the M’s should market a cologne called “Desperation.” Maybe it could make up for Weaver’s salary.
I also agree that major league hitters will realize that the only thing he has is a 97 mile an hour fast ball. Most of them can hit a 97 mile and hour fast ball if they know it’s coming. This is why Putz struggled before he developed his splitter. He desperatley needs to develop two more quality pitches. And the place to do that is indeed in the minor leagues.
Yeah, but you also have a lot of failures who had “seasoning†in the minors. The fact is that most pitchers do get more minor league experience, so your cites don’t have a lot of value. Most success stories, and most failures, both fall into that category.
Huh. I wonder why the vast majority of pitchers are brought up through the minors…
The point is that the failure rate among “rushed” pitchers is much higher than those who went the traditional route.
Arguments using examples of pitchers who have failed or succeeded with little or no experience in the minors are of little moment. We haven’t the foggiest notion how bright, adaptable, or self-confident that Morrow is as compared to other young professional pitchers, handling him in the way that typically leads to the highest rate of success seems to be the most reasonable method of approach.
I wonder why the vast majority of pitchers are brought up through the minors…
The vast majority of modern closers are used in the 9th inning in games where their teams have significant leads, as opposed to earlier innings in closer and/or tied games. This is despite research indicating closers would be more effective used as “stoppers”.
The vast majority of baseball teams have expanded their bullpen rosters in order to maximize the left-handed pitchers they have in their bullpen to give them favorable platoon matchups pitching, at the expense of bench depth and the ability to have favorable platoon matchups hitting. This is despite research indicating that LOOGYs are FAR less useful than solid platoon/bench hitters.
Just because baseball teams all think X doesn’t mean X is true- baseball history has shown us that the collective wisdom of baseball’s crowds sometimes is very, very wrong. Now, that being said, I tend to think Dave’s concerns are correct, and let’s face it, with Bill Bavasi’s track record, him being out on an island isn’t the same as Billy Beane being out on an island- and it’s FAR more likely this is a move that has the stink of Hargrove’s flop sweat all over it than a Back To The Future innovation. But you might be able to honestly and openly examine the question of “does limited minor elague exposure damage pitcher development?”… and it’s not as historically unique a situation as I thought a couple of weeks ago.
What are you arguing? That conventional wisdom isn’t always right? Well duh. But more times than not, conventional wisdom is right.
And let’s face it; the list of successful pitchers who got the Morrow treatment is small – and that’s not a coincidence.
the 1950s game was similar in some respects, yes. But we are so much farther advanced in areas like training and treatment, especially for pitchers. Remember, Sandy Koufax blew his arm out, too — and that’s what they called it, blowing your arm out. Nobody knew what a rotator cuff or pronation were. No one had any clue about pitch counts. The science of pitching mechanics didn’t exist at all. No one knew anything about stretching, or weights. If anybody was throwing a splitter, they didn’t call it that. Two-seam, four-seam, who knew? The extent of the clubhouse fitness routine was having some old guy with a cigar in the corner of his mouth rub Ben-Gay on your arm and maybe wrap it up with some ice.
The whole idea of player development hadn’t been invented yet. You played, and if you got better, you were “developed”. If you didn’t, you disappeared. Coaches said stuff like “atta boy” and “no batta, no batta” and “way to hustle”, not “Look at in stop-motion: see what you’re doing here on this pitch? You’re turning your glove, because you’re weight is turned, and you’re a little off line, see your foot there?, and you’ve lost velocity and movement, and he hit it.”
The game was (slightly) integrated in terms of African-Americans but the wave of Latin players had barely begun. Lighting for night games was fairly primitive. Air travel was rare. There were at least twice as many minor league teams.
Things were different then. Baseball is harder now, but we have a lot more tools.
And let’s face it; the list of successful pitchers who got the Morrow treatment is small – and that’s not a coincidence.
What’s your definition of successful (because if my seat of the pants research is right, there’s a good handful of All-Star pitchers and even another HOF starter who came up with zilch in the way of minor league experience as bonus babies)? And what’s the proper comparison group to Morrow? Is someone who was signed as a 17 year old in 1954 out of a high school team a proper comparison to someone who was pitching at Cal last year at age 21?
I’m asking that as a real question, by the way- because I don’t know yet. While I still think the M’s logic is pretty suspect here, the more I look, the more interesting the question is.
the 1950s game was similar in some respects, yes. But we are so much farther advanced in areas like training and treatment, especially for pitcher
OK, so you’re saying that advanced training and treatment in the 00’s makes it MORE likely Brandon Morrow is going to fall flat on his face during his Mariner career because he didn’t go to the minors, than if the Dodgers had signed him out of college for $8,000 in the 50’s? He’s going to be worse off now than bonus babies were in the 50’s?
See, that’s the thing- if anything, you would have been MORE likely to play in poor conditions that would hinder your development on Butte’s or Waco’s B ball team, than right now on a MLB team. It’s not like the minor leagues in the 1950’s would have been more advanced than they are today, no? We’re theoretically taking slices of “players with minor league experience” and “players without” and seeing outcomes- and minor league players oplayed in similar conditions in the 1950’s to what you described.
Seems to me that, more than anything, this boils down to a general mistrust of the M’s as an organization. If this decision were being made by the Twins or the Braves, I’d give them the benefit of the doubt. I might question it, but I would be much more likely to see it in a positive light. However, because this decisions is being made by the M’s, I assume it’s a bad decision. In other words, while it possible to an imagine that an organization could take this approach with Morrow, and do everything correctly, and make it work, it is difficult to imagine THIS organization doing so. Here are the reasons I think most of us are skeptical:
1) Wrong reasons: two men are trying to save their jobs. Decisions about the long-term development of one of your most valuable resources should not be made on the basis of the team’s performance in a single game or even a single season… especially this season, which doesn’t look good for the M’s.
2) Track record with pitchers: the M’s have broken or damaged a lot of promising young pitchers over the past 5 or 10 years, and they have managed to successfully develop one.
3) Track record in general: I don’t think the M’s are very smart. I just don’t. I don’t believe this “decision” was well thought through at all, and I haven’t seen any real evidence that the people in charge are good at their jobs. Combine that with the fact that the decision is questionable on its face, and it makes me nervous.
Add it up and it just seems like a bad decision.
1) Wrong reasons: two men are trying to save their jobs. Decisions about the long-term development of one of your most valuable resources should not be made on the basis of the team’s performance in a single game or even a single season… especially this season, which doesn’t look good for the M’s.
That’s why my general argument is that if you’re unsure enough of a manager and GM to leave them dangling on their contracts, you should generally just go ahead and fire them. The Mariners actions this offseason showed they didn’t really have faith in Hargrove and Bavasi, but for some reason didn’t think it justified to fire them.
Sure, every now and again ownership is rewarded for their faith with a great year and are vindicated by history. But more often it seems like you get what is happening in Seattle, where it looks like a wasted season because not only is the team apparently not going anywhere, the key decision-makers will be replaced at the end of the season so the ability to build for the future is hamstrung as well.
Hargrove and Bavasi have reached a point where every decision they make will be villified by a certain percentage of the population. Not to say they haven’t earned that villification…
The sooner Mike Hargrove and Bavasi are gone the better. Those two–particularly Bavasi– have destroyed this franchise. Does anyone else notice that in a place noted for its rain all of the rainouts occurred occurred outside of Seattle.
167: It also rains in Tampa, yet there’ve been no rainouts there. Weird.
139 — I’m starting to come around. A little.
141 — I also respect their opinions. That’s why I’m here. I’m interested in what they have to say.
165 — That’s probably the best point I’ve heard yet. I guess maybe I’m a little bit of an optimist who generally likes to give the benefit of the doubt, but maybe I should be a little bit more critical.
I guess I am starting to warm up to the question of what the cost/benefit is. How many games can he help us win? I guess that’s the question. I still disagree that we’re doing some kind of “harm” to him — either physical or psychological — but I think it’s a fair point to make that he’s probably not going to be as far along towards truly helping the team win (which will only happen when he’s taking a turn every fifth day) by next spring as he could be if he were at AA or AAA. And whoever it was who brought up the point of service, I think that’s a fair consideration, too.
And, Dave — consider me intellectually challenged. Just don’t ask me to call you professor. 😉
I know I’m coming a little late to the party, but can I add my two cents about how mean and horrible Dave is?
Dave has a specific writing style. I would, at times, characterize it as acerbic, but he’s also knowledgeable about what he writes about and as a result has no real patience for the “well, that’s just your opinion so LA LA LA” school of thought.
I like the fact that I can come here, and not only get an opinion about something related to the M’s, but also get real information backing it up that almost always makes me a smarter baseball fan in general whether I agree with the analysis or not.
Perhaps we can add something to the FAQ about Dave being a big meanie. 🙂
Back to the topic at hand; it irritates me as fan that the long-term health of the franchise is being damaged to help ensure that Hargrove and/or Bavasi squeeze out a few more months worth of paychecks.
I don’t think you can really intelligently argue that Morrow being used out of the bullpen, and sporadically at that, isn’t bad for him; I think all that you can really argue is as to the degree of damage done.
And no amount of damage should be acceptable to keep Hargrove and Bavasi in lattes for a couple more months. Keep them on as “consultants” if you have to, like the Sonics are doing with their now ex-coach.
But don’t let them break valuable long-term assets to the team.
I think everyone is makin this a much bigger deal than it is.
like Churchill said, Bavasi, Fontaine, and Hargrove will be gone.
somebody will come in and have the brains to send him to the minors to start
I’ve never seen a four year old drive a car, but I’m pretty sure it would end badly.
I drove the Vega into my grandmother’s garage at five. Put it in drive (engine wasn’t running), and straight down the driveway.
I wasn’t injured, the garage wasn’t damaged, the car was no worse for wear, but it scared the bejeezus out of everyone, including me. It was not a good idea, but I didn’t know better.
Bavasi should know better. He should keep the Vega doors locked.
I know snarky and this is no snarky.
Let’s come back to Lincecum for a moment. Yes, he’s short and has a herky-jerky delivery, but chew on this.
Lincecum has shown himself to have the talent to be a #4-5 starter right now. In fact, he could probably step in as the Giants’ #5 starter if they chose to call him up from Fresno. He’s more talented than Morrow. He has two pitches. This despite being the same age and pitching in the same league as Morrow in college.
And he’s going to be in Fresno until midseason. It’s not because the Giants don’t need help. It’s because the Giants want him to learn how to pitch and do so against AAA batting.
This is why keeping Morrow in Seattle is dumb, dumb, dumb. He shouldn’t be here. He should be in Jackson, TN, learning how to pitch.
One pitch does not make a pitcher. Being able to hit a fastball does not make a hitter.
#172 – I had a similar experience at age 2.5, except in my case it was a lake rather than a driveway, and there was damage to the car since it stopped running (forever) after the first 3 feet of water. 🙂
Argument for the difference a couple more years of experience makes?
Speaking of Soriano, I remember a game against the Sox as well from the summer of 2003 (i think). It was one of the only good games Freddy Garcia had pitched all year and I think the Mariners held a 1 or 2 run lead in the 7th, and I’m not sure exactly how the situation went down, but I remember Soriano coming in for Freddy with runners on 2nd and 3rd with 2 outs and Nomar coming to the plate. He threw him 4 97mph fastballs and struck him out. It was spectacular.
So how about Morrow in the rotation and Weaver in the pen? He’s only good for 3 innings these days anyway.
I would like to add Bob Feller to the list of pitchers that went to the majors with no minor league experience. Based on the current list of pitchers (Jim Abbott, Catfish Hunter, Bob Feller) It appears that a pitcher that successfully jumps directly to the Show about once in a generation. (generation equaling 33 years or one third of a century.)
Player: Debut
Bob Feller: 1936
Catfish Hunter: 1965
Jim Abbott: 1989
Admittedly Abbott’s Career is less stellar then that of Feller and Hunter. Also there may be other players that did make this jump successfully that I am not aware of. (Of course the definition of successful is a rather subjective thing.)
“Perhaps we can add something to the FAQ about Dave being a big meanie. 🙂 ”
You know, that’s actually not a bad idea. Something similar to Dave’s post 129. Dave’s style DOES take some, uh, getting used to.
Nuss-
I actually think there’s more to your original argument than many have given credit for. I mean, confidence is one of the major reasons why teams DON’T promote prospects agressively, and it’s been one of the complaints about the M’s minor league system (see Tui, Asdrubal Cabrera, etc.). If we think it’s bad when a player is put in a position to fail, we’re saying that there’s something important about being successful – something about getting people out that’s important to development. But if we’re saying that, then there must be something positive about getting people out at the MLB level. So yeah, I take the point.
Mind you, I still think it’s outweighed by the negatives that Dave’s brought up: first, that it teaches him that being successful is highly correlated with throwing as hard as he possibly can and second, it may leave the impression with the M’s that he’s best suited to relief.
All in all, I don’t care what he did last night, or what he’s likely to do this year. I think there’s an argument there, but for it to really pay off he needs to be in nearly every high-leverage situation, and if THAT’S true, then that’s really hurting his development as a starter.
I think it’s helpful to divorce this argument from the whole Bavasi/hargrove are on the hot seat thing, because I think everyone’s opinion about those two color everything. Not without reason, of course. It’s just that you can use those two’s incompetence, or the M’s track record with pitching ‘spects in general to argue against anything that they do (The M’s staff are not having Felix pitch 300 innings this year; given their track record, I’m not sure they get the benefit of the doubt here – felix should throw 15 hours per day, 7 days a week).
This question is fascinating, not least because it’s relatively rare. I think the M’s have made a mistake, and I’m just wondering what sort of data would disprove my hypothesis. Would an M’s division title do it? Maybe/maybe not…ok, I’m rambling.
But Dave’s style is what is sooooooo enjoyable. The same for DMZ, they don’t sugur coat everything and get to the point. It makes reading long threads like this easier cause you can just skip through a lot of the comments and just see what Dave and DMZ have added to the comments as their posts get to the point and help you understand their thinking. It makes a lot of us better fans.
Knowing this will probably be deleted for ot here goes anyway, [deleted, ot]
Grubbie-
I think that’s one of the problems. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy pretty much everything Dave and DMZ write, but opinions other than theirs are valid (and worth reading).
When there are posts like this that have almost 200 comments, it is a lot easier to just glance through the comments when you don’t have the time to read them all. To me, normally the comments by Dave and DMZ are a lot more informative then other comments(not saying always, but normally).
ah, Feller. what a freak. A high schooler, pitching in the big leagues– with a with a big high leg kick, a fastball that was only just slower than Walter Johnson’s (according to Johnson) and a nasty curveball.
He then added a slider when he came back from serving in WWII…
Based on the current list of pitchers (Jim Abbott, Catfish Hunter, Bob Feller) It appears that a pitcher that successfully jumps directly to the Show about once in a generation. (generation equaling 33 years or one third of a century.)
Hmm, actually, there’s Joey Jay, Steve Carlton, Johnny Antonelli, Sandy Koufax, Lindy McDaniel… from some of the links I posted.
I thought the argument would be more like the approaches of the 50s and the 21st Century are different, with the latter being more likely to go more all out, on more pitches, than in previous years.
I dunno. I think with the number of ball players that have played, there are bound to be guys who successfully make the jump–but the question would still remain, would they have been more successful if they had been taken more slowly.
This is above and beyond the consideration of whether or not it’s an efficient tactic to use. On the face of it, keeping the level of competition at the same level of your player seems to be a sensible rule to follow. What OTHER rule would supercede this?
Is it likely that Morrow will get called down at all this season? For example, if Hargrove was the main guy who wanted Morrow up and he got fired and John McLaren wasn’t so hot on him would the Mariners make the move?
I thought the argument would be more like the approaches of the 50s and the 21st Century are different, with the latter being more likely to go more all out, on more pitches, than in previous years.
Not so sure of that. There were a lot of power hitters in the 1950s, so it’s not like you could coast through most of the btting order like Chirsty Matthewson describes doing in the deadball era, though offense was on a downtrend from the peak years in the late 20’s-early 30’s that wouldn’t stop before 1969 in the NL (and continued into the DH Era in the AL) and wasn’t as good as today.
I dunno. I think with the number of ball players that have played, there are bound to be guys who successfully make the jump–but the question would still remain, would they have been more successful if they had been taken more slowly.
Yeah, we don’t really know. My cursory inspection of the bonus babies seems to be that the college/older players tended to do better, and the 17/18/19 years old had really high flameout rates, so that’s a MILD positive for Morrow’s future, and in line with what we might expect (think how HS pitchers have done in the draft vs. college pitchers)… but I’m very sympathetic to the arguments in 165, that this decision isn’t a case of a reasoned, Beane-esque innovation of finding hidden value the rest of baseball is ignoring, but sheer panic and a “Hmm, maybe Brandon can be the next Mark Lowe, it worked last year” after an offseason of poor decisions and bad assumptions.
Hmm, actually, there’s … Steve Carlton
No. I know for a fact he pitched for Tulsa in 1966. IIRC that’s where he first worked with McCarver.
Sandy Koufax
Baseball Cube doesn’t agree with me, but I swear he bounced around the Brooklyn system his first couple of years. (It also says Ernie Banks never played minor league ball when I know he started in the Sooner State League.)
http://www.baseball-reference.com/k/koufasa01.shtml
Debut June 24, 1955
December 14, 1954: Signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers as an amateur free agent (bonus baby).
Carlton I got from another site:
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/cash-in-the-cradle-the-bonus-babies/
And note how it’s phrased: “first full year”. It SOUNDS like he might have gotten 1964 for free before he had to go on the roster in 1965, since he was signed in late 1963. (OTOH, he had 27 minor league starts in one year, more than Morrow got in college ball.)
The point isn’t skipping the minor leagues. There’s nothing magical about minor league hitters that Morrow needs to see a bunch of before he’s ready for major leaguers. The difference is STARTS. Majors or minors, Morrow needs STARTS, not relief appearances. That’s what he needs to be coached for.
Koufax and Carlton were getting some starts even in his first year; though I’m still not that interested in arguing from anecdote. Koufax and Feller tell you nothing until you know how many flameouts there were on the other side. Guys like Steve Carlton are extremely rare, and Morrow probably isn’t one. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a bright future — IF he gets the training he needs. We don’t NEED to fill our rotation with five Steve Carltons to succeed; we do need to develop good prospects to the best of their capability.
For Morrow, that capability is mostly in the rotation, not in the bullpen.
The question is where is Morrow going to learn to start. The answer is, IN THE MINOR LEAGUES. That’s where the professional coaches who know how to teach starting pitching work. When you reach the big leagues, you’re expected to already know how to work with more than just a hard fastball and a full-steam-ahead approach. Pitching is like anything else; you have to know how to do it. Dumping Morrow into the rotation here is like dumping a smart kid who’s never had Algebra II into a college calculus course; he’s going to fail and flounder. Or he’s going to rot in the rotation or on the bench.
On the other hand, the Mariners are starting to look like a AAAA minor league team themselves….
Koufax and Carlton were getting some starts even in his first year; though I’m still not that interested in arguing from anecdote.
And Morrow might be getting starts by August, if the team tanks.
I don’t really disagree much. I’m simply saying this isn’t a “massively unprecedented in baseball history” occurrence, and there’s a nice chunk of pitchers who ended up getting used infrequently in MLB during the bonus baby days, without the benefit of minor league experience, and went on to fine careers. There are even cases of players like Johnny Antonelli or Joey Jay who spent some time in the minor leagues AFTER their bonus baby days who came out fine. So in the end, I’m not sure that this could be indefensible…but the problem, as has been pointed out numerous times, is the M’s aren’t handling Morrow as part of a systematic re-evaluation of how you can handle young armas, but this is a panic move.