brandon morrow to TOR, brandon league + PTNBL to SEA

[flosses like fossas]

jack z's not done yet. i'm guessing this puts an end to 'morrow to brewers' ideas. the article notes that league projects as an average reliever and that the ptbnl will likely be a very solid prospect.

 

per mlbtraderumors.

 

edit: added content

[JoeHova]

On the surface this appears to be an odd deal for Seattle. Morrow is under team control for one more year than League and League is a Super-2 so he's already going into his 2nd year of arbitration. Morrow also might be able to start whereas League is (probably) strictly a reliever. I don't really like either guy as a player (Morrow in particular is excruciating to watch) but it seems like Morrow should have a little more value than this. Of course, the quality of the PTNBL is a big unknown at this point. If it's somebody good this starts to look better for Seattle.

[Invader3K]

I'm glad Melvin didn't trade Gamel for him. I just am not that impressed on what I've read about Morrow.

[YostInfection]

From what I've heard and read, the prospect is either Arencibia or the recently acquired D'Arnaud. Looks like Jack Z wanted to find his catcher.

 

Would we have given up Salome/Lucroy and Braddock for Morrow? Not me.

[Funketown]

I'll just reiterate that this really depends on the PTBNL. Morrow certainly has significant upside over League, and I think we've all learned that Jack Z. rarely gets fleeced. Perhaps he knows something about Morrow that we don't realize.

[endaround]

Or he is just leery from his time with the Brewers of talented but oft injured arms.

[TooLiveBrew]

I think we've all learned that Jack Z. rarely gets fleeced.

 

I think it's a bit early in his tenure to make a comment like this in either direction.

[Nader Raider Tim]

Rotoworld is saying that Yohermyn Chavez is the PTBNL

 

http://www.rotoworld.com/content/playerpages/player_main.aspx?sport=MLB&id=5364

 

Gah this along with the VAzquez trades are deals that I would have loved the Brewers to make.

[JohnBriggs12]

Rotoworld is saying that Yohermyn Chavez is the PTBNL

 

http://www.rotoworld.com/...px?sport=MLB&id=5364

 

Gah this along with the VAzquez trades are deals that I would have loved the Brewers to make.

Toronto gave up about the equivalent of a Villanueva and Chris Dennis though it's likely Chavez was a bit higher rated than Dennis.

[Funketown]

I would have to agree that Chavez is probably a bit higher rated than Dennis. At 20 years old, he put up a slash line of .283/.346/.474/.821 with 21 HR's in A ball. I would think he'd be somewhere between 15 - 25 in Toronto's prospect rankings, although I won't claim to be familiar with their system.

[JoeHova]

The Mariners must be hoping Chavez's real ability is closer to his 2009 season than it is to his 2008 (.595 OPS). It seems like an underwhelming return for a guy who Mariner fans were convinced could be the centerpiece of a Prince to Seattle deal. I have to believe Jack Z would have preferred Prince to League & Chavez. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif

[TheCrew07]

Hopefully I don't have to pull this thread out next season when discussing Melvin's inability to put together a dominant starting rotation... however I had a bad feeling.

 

Many posters keep saying that it looked like Melvin was going to make a trade for the other starting pitcher he wanted, I think we're looking at another averagish SP from the bargin bin on a multi year deal. Every year there are deals being made for pitchers of significant upside, when are we going to target an arm with some upside?

 

Morrow was the exact type of player the Brewers should have been looking to acquire with their limited resources post Sabathia/Hardy. A pitcher with significant upside but shakey results thus far.

 

The flip side of this is that Jack Z has now traded 2 of his more promising young arms in his first off season in Aumont and Morrow, meanwhile Toronto continues to stockpile young arms following TB's model.

 

I'm not necessarily against what Z has done in Seattle thus far, but I hope for his sake he doesn't dig himself a hole. Then again, maybe he thinks he'll be able to fill the rotation through FA, or maybe he's like Melvin and prefers offense over pitching. It will be interesting to see how the dominos fall for him.

[Ennder]

Hopefully I don't have to pull this thread out next season when discussing Melvin's inability to put together a dominant starting rotation... however I had a bad feeling.

 

Why would pulling this thread out mean anything? The Brewers already talked to them about Morrow and they couldn't find the right prospects that they wanted to do the deal. Yeah I agree the end result looks underwhelming but Jack Z must have liked something in these players. I just think it is wrong to assume Melvin somehow 'blew it' when he actually did talk about trading for the player but just couldn't find a match. We have no clue at all what the Mariners were asking for out of our system.

 

This kind of thing happens to me all the time in fantasy baseball. I make a fair offer for a player, I get turned down and they end up trading the guy for players I think are worthless. Everyone judges players differently and we have no clue who was offered on our end.

[dadofandrew]

What I wonder is SEA's offense still sucks. Morrow must be disliked out there, as they gave him away for a guy who is Brandon's floor.

[endaround]

No Morrow's floor is Seth McClung, assuming Morrow stays healthy that is.

[JoeHova]

Morrow must be disliked out there, as they gave him away for a guy who is Brandon's floor.

This is inaccurate. Morrow's career BB/9 is 5.8. That high of a walk rate bodes poorly for his long-term success, especially as a starter. To put that in perspective, Doug Davis has a career walk rate per 9 of 4.1 which equates to 90 walks per 200 innings. If Morrow was able to pitch 200 innings with his current walk rate of 5.8, he would walk 129 batters. Morrow is probably one of the most frustrating players in baseball to watch because of his inability to control where the ball is going. He has the most walks per 9 innings of any active pitcher with at least 120 innings pitched. (If you lower the threshold to 100, our old friend Dennis Sarfate and Radhames Liz have higher rates. Hardly great company.)

 

Morrow has a chance to be good but he also has a chance to be really bad. League is certainly better than Morrow's "floor".

[GoudaBrew]

Remember, Jack Z was a scout and had no problems with his top starting pitching prospect moving to the closers position at a strange time of the year (not far before the start of the '09 season if I recall). Jack is betting that Morrow can't/won't reach his potential and is getting some pieces for him now. That being said, I thought they could have gotten a more highly touted prospect.

[TheCrew07]

This kind of thing happens to me all the time in fantasy baseball. I make a fair offer for a player, I get turned down and they end up trading the guy for players I think are worthless. Everyone judges players differently and we have no clue who was offered on our end.

I just lost a post about this so I'm going to quickly sum it up as i have other stuff to do tonight.

 

I could live with your take on this situation if DM had ever demonstrated a willingness to wheel and deal for young pitching in the past. I don't want to hear about Capellan, we were essentially dumping Kolb, that was a very low risk move, and I still have a hard time understanding that trade given how bad Cappellan's stuff actually was. DM only makes low risk moves like his signature deal... What risk was there for him in the Sabathia trade? No long term contract, proven commodity of CY quality, prospects were blocked and expendable, he was "going for it" for the playoffs. Only people like me were going to criticize that move because of the rotation issues looming on the horizon, I believe the overwhelming majority of fans support that trade, and still would have supported that trade if the team didn't make the playoffs.

 

I guess my point comes down to this, at what point in years, trades, whatever will people start to acknowledge that DM keeps letting opportunities pass him bye? How far along do we have to progress here for the obvious pattern he's established in Texas and Milwaukee to become clear for everyone? Sure he traded for Sabathia, but are we really to believe that he's passed on every other projectable pitcher traded in last 6 years because the cost was too high or no deal was offered? Other teams have acquired those pitchers, teams within our division as a matter of fact, but somehow they've been out of Milwaukee's reach?

 

Morrow's BB rate is exactly why you target him, it's not a reason to avoid him. We don't have many expendable prospects left and we aren't going to get a "sure thing" without giving up 2 of those prospects, that's just the way the market is right now. You take a pitcher like Morrow and hope you can get him to stop nibbling and trust his stuff, because if he does he can turn a rotation around by himself (Manny Parra anyone?). It's not like Morrow's ultimate value was out of the Brewers price range prospect wise, we could have made that deal if DM had wanted, just like Jackson's price tag last year wasn't beyond what the Brewers could have offered. All I know is this, it's impossible toacquire the next Edwin Jackson, fluke or not, if you don't ever take a chance. If my choices are another FA pitcher or a Morrow type, given the Brewers financial situation I'm taking Morrow like player 9 times out of 10.

 

People around here can keep making threads about FA and big name pitchers but there's simply not enough value there for me personally. Big name players cost too much to acquire or are too expensive to sign in FA. However those that like that approach win, DM is definitely on your side, this is a difference in philosophy more than anything else. He's seems to believe the old manta "there is no such thing as a pitching prospect" and would much rather take on players like Sabathia and Peavy rather than a player like Kazmir or a prospect pitcher. On the surface sure, who wouldn't want a CY pitcher, but it's not as simple as their production on the field for a team like Milwaukee.

 

On the flip side I love what Toronto has done thus far, they've added more projectable pitching to a system that already had 5 of it's top 8 prospects as pitchers with decent to good upside. I don't envy TB or Toronto for the division they play in, but I do envy the approach they are taking to compete with the big boys.

[flosses like fossas]

following up...

 

here's a solid rundown of the morrow deal from THT. in short, it shows that league's stats make him a valuable set-up man (very valuable if you follow the writer's line of thinking) and chavez has upside. also suggests that jack z. lacked either patience or confidence in morrow's abilities and/or his ability to stay healthy. the writer sees this as a win-now move for seattle more than anything.

[KCBrewerfan34]

The board has always struggled with trading prospects (so does Melvin). The Catch 22 here is if the propsects are "can't miss" they're too valuable to the Brewers and if they aren't "can't miss" they don't have enough value to other teams. I have always maintained Melvin's timing has been bad. The time to trade Hardy or Hart have passed to get max value. He has to do a better job of trading some of his major leaguers at their height (for pitching) of value and then replace them with prospects coming up through the system.

 

I have a feeling Melvin is on a 2 year plan, this off-season and next and with the money coming off the books next year he will add 1 or 2 more starters and 2011 will be the big push for the playoffs and beyond, then we'll probably have to re-tool.

 

 

Thoughts on that theory?

[mothershipconnection]

The problem with all this talk of "peak value" is that it's only descriptive (after the fact) and not predictive. How do we know when a player's value has peaked? Should we have traded Prince after he hit 50 homers, when should we trade Braun, and what about Gallardo? Any of these guys could fall off a cliff next year and never have the value they do now, so we should trade them, right? Problem is, we'd be trading them for guys who could also fall off a cliff, and their value may never be as high as it is now. On the other hand, our guys who appear to be peaking, can easily have another great season, and this replication makes them more valuable to teams who'd trade for them. Had Hardy posted an .830 OPS last year, we now have a commodity we can trade for a bit more than the previous year.

 

Sure, it would have been fantastic in hindsight to trade Corey Hart after his .892 OPS in 2007, but who knew he'd fall apart? Look at the guy's minor league numbers, and at age 25 he looked like a rising star. Ryan Braun has similar numbers at age 24, and if you'd have predicted him to fall apart, you'd now look like an idiot.

 

Sure, we can look at McGehee and say his production is unlikely to match 2009's, so we'll guess he's at peak value, but we're guys who post on a website in our free time, while baseball teams (as often as they make dumb moves) have guys that know way more baseball than we do, I don't think we know something they don't. Nobody is going to ignore his history and give us the same return as they would for a guy with .859 OPS production over multiple years.

 

I'd like for those who rant and moan about missing out on trading players at peak value to post a list of players who will fall apart next season even though there's nothing in their numbers to suggest they'll fall apart. Tell me who the next stud 26 year-old SS to fall apart will be. Which young all star OF will turn to garbage? If someone here has this predictive ability, I'll take their criticisms of failing to trade at peak value seriously.

[TheCrew07]

Why does it always have to be "fall apart next year" with you poeple? I say again it's not about a player's production going south at all, it's about filling an organizational need and giving value to get value.

 

I've suggested many times that I'd like to build around 2-3 young hitters, and 2-3 young pitchers, and keep the rest of the roster fluid. So to answer your question who I would trade for pitching, the answer is the same this season as it was last season, anyone but Braun or Fielder. Braun signed a longterm contract, he's a cornerstone player and Fielder doesn't seem to be going anywhere. I'm still not sure what the best thing to do with Fielder is ultimately going to be... I'm leaning towards keeping him now, if he was going to be moved his peak value was clearly last off season as well as he was and still is a premium offensive player, but 3 years of relatively cheap cost controlled production would have been more valuable than next off season when he's essentially a glorified rental. However Texas managed to get quite a haul to for Teixeira, though Teixeira was a better all around player than Fielder is, so while I hope the Brewers will be able to manage that sort of return in the future, I doubt it will come to fruitition.

 

If you look at the Brewer roster of the last say 4 years, what players were truly special? There are only 2, Braun and Fielder... Weeks has the potential to be, but his results have never caught up with his physical talent. I really like Hart and Hardy, I've said as much many times, they were/are my 2 favorite Brewers, but they were always relatively expendable, as was Hall once the organization chose Hardy, as it Weeks, McGehee, Gamel, Escobar. I think if someone like Gamel or Lawrie proves to be special you lock them right away.

 

I would lock up the core players, the special talents, go year to year with the rest, and build from the rotation down. That means in total I'd like 4-6 players under long term contracts at any given time, I'm not into trading pitching today, but that may change in the future if we can finally get a surplus of arms. I believe in pitching, I believe the team gets better value for hitters than pitchers in FA, so any position players on the team outside of my 2 or 3 core players are fair game to fill holes in the rotation. Again, the point I tried to make about Hardy through the entire winter of 2008-2009 was that he was our most valuable and expendable player to move for pitching. I didn't expect him to tank, on a personal level I didn't want him to tank because he's one of my favorite Brewers ever. He was simply expendable because Escobar was behind him, just like Hardy made Hall expendable.

 

It has nothing to with Hardy, Hart, or Hall tanking, and everything to do with building a rotation. I would have traded Hart for Edwin Jackson in a hear beat, Hardy for Buchholz, Hall for any projectable arm at the time.... again my focus is the rotation, not the 8 position players, not the bullpen, just rotation, and I don't allow myself to get too attached to even my favorite players.

[mothershipconnection]

Why does it always have to be "fall apart next year" with you poeple? I say again it's not about a player's production going south at all, it's about filling an organizational need and giving value to get value.

 

I have no problem with the idea of trading strengths for weaknesses: that's something people can reasonably and objectively determine. I do have a problem with everyone who thinks we should have traded players "at their peak" as if they knew at the time that said season would be their peak. It's the same as looking back at GM stock and wondering why everyone didn't sell when its price was high. People mis-predict players' peak values the same way they do with stocks, because we only have data on past performance and no magic powers to predict where the value will be in the future.

[KCBrewerfan34]

Well said Crew??? Mothership, your post fails to bring one thing to light. It's Melvin's job to build a team!!!, he gets paid a fortune to do it. We only speculate on things here on a message board. Melvin has to step it up, the Wolf signing basically only replaces Looper and the Brew had a great record in his starts anyway. IMO the Brewers have not improved except in the bullpen and if this is all Melvin has up his sleeve then we're in for another long season.

 

It's Melvins job to evaluate players, determine what trades he can make and his #1 priority has to be building a starting staff, starters win championships. Our track record proves we can't wait for the minors to provide our next starter. Gallardo and Parra basically have been it for a long time through the system and certianly the jury is out on Parra, while they did hit a HR on Gallardo.

 

 

Come on Doug its time to step it up, the fans of Milwaukee want it and deserve it (attendance over 3 million in this market in this economy is unbelievable)

[mothershipconnection]

Mothership, your post fails to bring one thing to light. It's Melvin's job to build a team!!

 

I think we're now talking about different things. I give Melvin no free pass on failing to acquire decent players. There's no "avoid my wrath free card" on the Suppan and Gagne signings. I do, however, give him a pass on not trading Hall, Hardy, and Hart at the end of what history showed to be a great season before a big drop-off.

 

With a magic crystal ball, you could have a fantastic team, and we'd have taken Berkman and Utley instead of Peterson and Morrow the year after taking Halladay instead of Jenkins and then taking Sabathia instead of Gold the next year. You can only fault someone for making or not making a move based on the information available at the time. If a move made great sense at the time, we can't go back and rip someone for making it, even if it ended in disaster.

 

the Wolf signing basically only replaces Looper

 

Wolf's career ERA as a starter is .63 below Looper's. As unhappy as we all were with him last year, Looper's another move that hard to fault in a vacuum. While we needed another starter on top of Looper, getting a guy who looked like he'd be a 4.5-4.75-ish ERA pitcher over 180 IP or so for that price is not bad.