Game 15, Mariners at Rangers
DMZ · April 23, 2007 at 4:17 pm · Filed Under Game Threads
Baek v Millwood. 5:05 our time, FSN.
(Happy Cha Seung Baek day? It’s just not the same.)
CF-L Lofton
LF-L Catalanotto
SS-R Young
1B-B Teixeira
DH-R Sosa
3B-L Blalock
2B-R Kinsler
RF-R Cruz
C-R Laird
Jamie Burke starts at catcher for Johjima.
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442 Responses to “Game 15, Mariners at Rangers”
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Hopefully the first of many wins for Morrow in a M’s uniform.
Please don’t suggest trading us Mateo. We’ll take Morrow, though. ^_^
Good win tonight; glad my second-favorite team got one.
You would take him though 🙂
Edgar with a line drive down the left field line…
A win is a win but I’m not going to get too excited. Texas truly does look awful.
Can we please switch Morrow’s and Baek’s jobs? Even if Morrow can only go 4 or 5 innings the next couple starts, I’d love to find out what we have by the time Felix is back. We know Baek is nothing more than a fill in #5, so what’s the risk in finding out if Morrow the starter is more than that right now?
We know what Brandon Morrow is right now – he’s a guy with one major league pitch, inconsistent mechanics, and below average command. He’d be a disaster in the rotation.
So he is 25 year old Randy Johnson. So what. We are running out 3 guys right now with not even one above average pitch, I really don’t see the downside in having Baek backup Morrow instead of vice versa.
So he is 25 year old Randy Johnson.
By the time he was 25, Randy Johnson had thrown 430 minor league innings over 80 starts, plus another 26 innings in 4 major league starts.
So no, he’s not a 25 year old Randy Johnson.
We are running out 3 guys right now with not even one above average pitch, I really don’t see the downside in having Baek backup Morrow instead of vice versa.
Put Morrow in the rotation, and he now has to pace himself to try to get through 5+ innings. So now, he’s not going max effort on his fastball, and his velocity is 92-94 instead of 95-98. Congratulations, you’ve just taken away the one major league pitch he has.
Since he has below average command and no secondary pitches, he’ll be reduced to simply throwing his 92 MPH four-seam fastball down the heart of the plate and watching it sail over the wall. If he doesn’t go on the DL with whiplash, his ERA will sit at 10+, you’ll have destroyed his confidence, and you’ll be calling it a failed experiment.
It’s a horrible idea. Brandon Morrow is barely a major league reliever at this point, and he’s nothing close to a major league starter.
I dissagree I would rather have Baek up now than Marrow, in fact I really don’t want to see Marrow in the Majors at all yet, he has been fairly spotty this year, and Baek was actually pretty good for us last year, although he did not pitch well tonight.
What happened to the kid between being the fifth pick in the draft and now? Did he never have more than one ML ready pitch? Were his mechanics always bad?
What happened to the kid between being the fifth pick in the draft and now?
This isn’t the NFL or the NBA – college players are not ready to step in and play in the majors right away. It’s a huge jump, and one that only the absolute best of the best can handle. Morrow needed time in the minors to get better, just like every other kid drafted last summer. The M’s just didn’t give it to him.
Did he never have more than one ML ready pitch? Were his mechanics always bad?
His slider has always been a work in progress. The inconsistency of the breaking ball is just significantly magnified on the major league stage.
I was just making a point that a guy with one plus pitch and bad command and mechanics can still be better than what we’ve got.
He didn’t look to lose too much after 3 innings tonight, and on a regular starting schedule his pacing might not be as big an issue after a couple weeks as you make it out to be.
I agree that he would be best served starting in AA for a while, but since that’s not going to happen, we work with what we got. Can you honestly tell me that you think Baek and Weaver are better options, not only now, but especially in the second half if Morrow went into the rotation now? If you say “absolutely” I will stop posting and go gouge my eyes out, because they are apparently of no use to me.
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
Literally.
HE’S HAD 16 PRO INNINGS BEFORE 2007.
It’s all raw material right now, and you can count on the fingers of one hand the pitchers who could jump from college to pros…Even Felix had a few years in the minors to develop.
And Morrow could use a year or two in the minors to develop command and another pitch to become a starting pitcher.
Are you thinking short term or long term, Mr. Hargrove?
Sure, he could use a year or two, but he’s clearly not going to get it any time soon. So what then? Status quo? Batista to HoRam to Weaver to Baek?
I was just making a point that a guy with one plus pitch and bad command and mechanics can still be better than what we’ve got.
You move Morrow to the rotation, and he then has 0 plus pitches. That fastball is only a plus pitch if he’s in relief. He doesn’t have Felix’s fastball. He has Gil Meche’s fastball.
He didn’t look to lose too much after 3 innings tonight, and on a regular starting schedule his pacing might not be as big an issue after a couple weeks as you make it out to be.
He was throwing max effort most of the game, because he knew there was no need to pace himself. Put him in the rotation, he backs off, and the velocity comes down. Pacing isn’t some myth I’ve created – it’s a legitimate fact. Guys throw harder in the pen than they do in the rotation – thats just not something you can argue with.
Can you honestly tell me that you think Baek and Weaver are better options, not only now, but especially in the second half if Morrow went into the rotation now? If you say “absolutely” I will stop posting and go gouge my eyes out, because they are apparently of no use to me.
Absolutely. Brandon Morrow would be an abomination as a major league starter right now.
I’ll admit it, after the on-going bad taste in my mouth which was all of last week (including the game I went to on Thursday, where my friend and I were sitting close enough to the M’s bullpen to scream “NOOOOOO!” when we saw Mateo going into the game), I’ve been actively rooting for them to continue to lose.
I just want to see Hargrove fired, and the sooner, the better. I don’t want them to limp into May and then go .500 for the month because they’re playing enough Texases and Kansas Citys and Tampa Bays to keep them from looking as truly awful as they are.
So in the interest of honesty, I can guess you can just call me the Anti-Fan until the Human Rain Delay stops hanging over our collective heads.
Here’s to starting another long losing streak tomorrow.
Go M’s!
Ouch! I’ll miss watching Garret Anderson run out grounders most of all!
Batista,HoRam, and Baek are probably better for the short term.
I don’t think it’s quite that, but I think it’s instructive to look at Felix last year–he didn’t have command of his fastball (to the extent he had it in his first two games), and while he did have two other pitches, he was told to “establish” the fastball. That essentially gave him just one pitch, and teams just sat on the fastball, dead read.
I don’t think Morrow is Felix. And I think a) he’ll need those other pitches to succeed as a starter, and b) he won’t be able to learn it at the majors–the margin of error is too small for him to develop it during the season.
ITYM, “Human Brain Delay”
hth
I’ll always take a chance on a “would be abomination” over 3 “currently are abominations” anyday.
Felix. Last year. Hitters were sitting on his fastball, dead read.
Morrow isn’t as good. Would you accept results that are certainly going to be worse than Felix last year? And that WOULD put him into some pretty nasty territory….
Weaver/Batista/HoRam Territory? Probably not.
He may not be as bad as Weaver but I don’t think he would do any better than Batista or HoRam.
Look, he did pretty well in 3 plus in the “bandbox” that everyone was freaking out about a few days ago. I know that I can’t debate pacing here, but you don’t go 3 plus on pure adrenaline. You just don’t.
Best case scenario, he is Felix light from last year, and scratches out a sub-5 ERA while getting 10ish wins. Second best case he gets bombed with a Weaver-esque whiplash inducing ERA and gets sent down to actually do what we drafted him to do.
Worst case scenario is that he stays doing exactly what he’s doing, learning nothing about how to “pace” himself, and has to go down to the minors next year. There are just not enough games like tonight where he is valuable to the team as a middle inning reliever, and if there are, we are screwed anyway. Running out the current set of starters is just giving up, and I’d rather take a chance that his confidence might suffer instead of watching 3 guys every week with no confidence to begin with.
No.
If you want the Morrow you saw tonight, the full-throttle, good fastball guy, and you start him, you get three innings, possibly four.
That’s not a starter. That doesn’t help. It doesn’t help him, it doesn’t help the bullpen, it doesn’t help the team.
This — this pacing thing, the lack of other pitches — is exactly why he should be getting innings in down in A-ball.
But no. It’s not a gamble, and certainly not a gamble worth taking.
Ok, well I respectfully disagree. I do think he should be starting somewhere, but since he’s here, and since our other guys are horrendous, I’d give it a shot.
And yes, since the M’s did this back-assward, you would only get 4 innings for the few starts, but that’s more than you are getting from the current guys anyway.
Are you guys saying that Felix or Lincecum or any other hard throwing young starter would throw 104 in Morrow’s role? I just don’t buy that. Yes there is a drop off from relieving to starting, but a great arm is a great arm. Maybe Morrow has it, and maybe he doesn’t. But lets find out if he can help more than the guys who are currently losing. If this is not a gamble worth taking, then what is?
I should qualify…If it is preferable for a starter to give up 6 runs in 6 innings over one who might give up 1 or 2 runs in 4 innings for the next few weeks, then yes, they should stick with what they’ve got. But I don’t see how that helps the team any more than what I’m suggesting.
Final question, and I realize I am most likely annoying the hell out of the authors who have probably forgotten more about baseball than I ever knew…
What is your ideal M’s rotation right now, given the current guys and possible minor league replacements? It might be too early to try Morrow, but who is better?
not a baseball genius, but…
since felix is gone…I would go
Washburn
Ramirez
Batista
Woods
Baek
send weaver to the pen
Our fielders would need catching gear with that rotation.
Pick four of those guys — go with a four-man rotation. Or if you have to use a 5-man rotation, it’s the five guys they have now.
#431-That’s like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Of course, we all know who to thank for this. . .
434:
OMG WHO?
thank you. and, as has prob. been said better elsewhere, Morrow needs more than throwing just hard– when the (currently poor-hitting) Rangers saw him the 2nd time through, they started hitting him.
sheesh. Alex.
G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB BA OBP SLG
18 75 26 30 7 0 14 34 1 .400 .453 1.053
so, think that they are bitching about his lack of triples and stolen bases in NY? 🙂
How about taking a view longer than next week or next month and actually making a series of consistent decisions that enhance the ongoing strength and performance of the franchise for the long-term? Your entire argument about putting Morrow in the rotation right now because he’s the lesser of several evils ignores the larger question which is, “what’s better for Morrow’s development, and what makes him the most valuable long-term asset to the franchise?”
I agree that morrow should be in AA, yet if they must have him in the show then he should get a few starts. Yes only got 4 or 5 innings but atleast he gets some work and heck the A’s are basically a AAA team anyway offensively. I rather see Baek over Weaver but that won’t happen. I too am rooting for the m’s to loose so they dont trade anyone at teh trade deadline in hopes to make the playoofs because i rather have choo then ellison and still have a 24 year old lefty in the minors. I hope we are awful and are forced to trade Ichiro for a few young pitchers because i would be stunned if ichi is here next year.
Morrow was also helped by the wind blowing in. Two of those early fly outs would have been HRs in July.
I want to see him starting. In Jackson, Tennessee. Unfortunately, the only way that’s going to happen is if Hargrove is fired, since with his current development Morrow is destined to be another Soriano — a starter stuck in a setup role by an unimaginative manager and FO.
As for this “Baek over Weaver” argument, it would have made sense if we all knew in January what we now know in April. Then the team could have saved $7.5M and maybe spent it on Mike Piazza to DH.
One of the big problems with baseball is that contracts are guaranteed, so the contract you sign is what you pay for that player’s performance regardless of how he does. Maybe it’s more like real life than the NFL’s system, but I wish someone would convince MLBPA that if they’re willing to put in a deal where a team can void a contract in its first 90 days their players will all end up making more money since the money being sucked up by bad players will then flow to other players who wouldn’t be getting the opportunity.
Oooh, Mound Conference Theater