Michael Morse 201 - the Season-Spanning Platoon
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Q. So you stash Smoak for a while?
A. If you can't trade Smoak, right, (um, yeah, right ) you stash him. You can spin the carousel for four months until Morales is orbited on July 31. It's fluid and dynamic and I like it -- presuming you can't get Stanton or somebody, of course.
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You do waste Carp in this scenario. But then again, Michael Morse is an absolutely pitch-perfect model of what Mike Carp would look like if he hit the triple cherries all the way across.
Get used to wasting young talent. They're not playing Stars & Scrubs coherently enough to avoid the wastage. It's going to get a lot worse, too.
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Q. Can Morse play 1B?
A. He's way too big to play the OF very well, but he used to be a SS, so I'd be surprised if he couldn't play 1B well.
He says he doesn't want to DH. Here's where that Billy Beane paradigm doubles back for love. What would Billy tell him?
Still, Morse can play 1B. Morales' splits are fine as a DH.
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Q. How does the jobshare work?
A. Jaso and Montero do the catching. You get Fat Ichiro, Morse and the non-catcher to share 1B and DH. Ibanez and Morse play some RF (meaning you need gloves in CF and RF).
A Morse scenario eats into Rauuuul's AB's. Otherwise it's pretty much a 5-to-make-4, and all of the older guys are 125-game types anyway.
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Q. So Kendrys LH, Morse RH, one right and one left.
A. Earl used to platoon three guys in LF, get 37 homers out of the trio, and boast that he'd created Reggie! out of thin air. Well, Billy Beane gets 30 homers and 100 RBI's out of his cleanup platoon too -- but he platoons them a year apiece. :- ) Beane's third-order thinking is highly amusing.
You think Beane would hesitate to bring Kendrys Morales and Mike Morse in, to bat #3 and #4, with the certain knowledge that they're gone the next year?
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Q. The idea of a band-aid is so .... melancholy. Who can root for a hired gun?
A. The good townsfolk of El Lago? Texas and Anaheim been doing a pretty fair Stacey Bridges impersonation. I SAID GIMME ANOTHER BOTTLE!
You want to talk band-aids, let's talk Endy Chavez and Casey Kotchman. Anyway, there are two happy endings here, happy endings for 2014, that is.
First ending, Morse gladly hits his 30 homers and gleefully knocks in his 95 runs ... only to glumly find that the market next winter is still only 2 years, $16M. See Branyan, Russ. Mike Morse ain't going to age well, and MLB is going to be very aware of that. It says here, even a Mike Morse coming off a great 2013 is going to find himself high and dry. So the M's could re-up Morse even after a great season.
Second happy ending, the M's could bring in Kendrys to hit #3, bring in Mike Morse to hit #5, and ... any suggestions about possible bats to form a cleanup hitter sandwich? What would stop the M's from dealing five blue-chippers for Stanton, even after Morse were here? Hey, we'll jump ship on Rauuuuul if it's onto an aircraft carrier like that bad boy.
As secondary adds, Kendrys Morales and Michael Morse would float anybody's boat.
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Michael Morse 301 - the 173 Power Index
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Q. To which bats would you compare Michael Morse?
A. As far as bases lost and bases gained, he stacks up pretty decently to Billy Butler. And Alex Gordon. And Nick Swisher. And Kendrys Morales. We're guessing you've heard of them.
BaseballHQ projects him to 290/330/500 for the upcoming year, this assuming he's in the Nationals' home park. SSI figures Safeco to be a friendlier park than that, and Morse's hulking body would be a brilliant test case for the new fences.
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As far as swings that remind ... Morse when he came up was consciously imitating ARod. A member of the Charlie Lau school. Frank Thomas. The left-hand heavy sweeping arc.
That's all gone now. Morse is one of the biggest and strongest men in the game of baseball, he sinks his weight, compactly follows through with two hands. Richie Sexson and Mike Piazza had comparable swings. He's bludgeoning the ball with the Bruce Irvin speed-rusher body.
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Q. What do you think of the lucky BABIP?
A. Amazing article by Dave Cameron at Fangraphs.
What did these 29-year-olds have in common with Morse? Okay: Josh Hamilton, Derek Jeter, Kevin Youkilis, Matt Holliday, the borderline HOF'er Bobby Abreu (at ages 28-30 again), the fiery-hot Milton Bradley, Kevin Youkilis when he was challenging for the MVP?
Read Cameron's article and find out.
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Q. Does Michael Morse really hit the ball that hard?
A. In 2011, BaseballHQ calculated his Power Index (PX) at 173, where 100 is major league average. There's Josh Hamilton, Mark Reynolds, Adam Dunn, and Mike Morse pretty much. This kid has swelled up like a punctured can of tuna. Hammer time, babe.
Cameron concludes that Morse hits the ball EXTREMELY hard, and that the BABIP is generally a skill. He's right.
To be fair, HQ projects Morse to a 134 PX next year, which has him tumbling down in to Albert Pujols and Robinson Cano territory.
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Q. What was that thing about the topspin swing?
A. That it makes the ball sit down at Safeco, right through the air-popper effect.
And that Michael Morse has it in spades. Note his career 1.49 grounder ratio, which converges on a preposterous HR-per-fly-ball rate. Watch him take a swing. I'm tellin' ya, man. Roger Federer.
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Q. You're saying you want Morse here.
A. No, I want Giancarlo Stanton here.
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Q. Is 290/330/500 really a fair projection for the guy?
A. His lifetime total is .295/.347/.492 and his OPS+ is 126. I think at this point you can give him credit for .295/.347/.492. He's almost retired, you feel me?
Over the period 2009-12, Morse has the #24 wOBA in both leagues. Adjacent to him are Troy Tulowitzki, Shin-Soo Choo and Carlos Gonzalez. Several slots below Morse sits Billy Butler at #30 in the majors over that time span.
I know, right?!
Anyway. If were were paying for Billy Butler to DH, you'd be okay with it. Point is, there's a case for Mike Morse. It's that he can hit a ton. You'd be importing a #3 and a #4 hitter to anchor the kids' lineup.
Other batters very comparable to Morse: the age 26-31 Richie Sexson, and the current Kendrys Morales. To get to Sexson from where Morse stands, you've got to move some 1B's and some 2B's over into BB's and HR's, in equal measure. Sexson had a .350 OBP and .500 SLG, but he did it by pitch stalking.
Morales and Morse are pretty much a push all the way around.
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Michael Morse 401 - the Swing
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Spent the morning in general anesthesia; who knew that P90X would literally bust a gut, but it did. So if we don't have the energy tonight to screen-grab the videos, perhaps you'll find it in your blue-and-teal little hearts to forbear. ::bah humbug::
Right-clicking the link to open the video up in a new window ...
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=== The Swing, to RF ===
Who does this remind you of, the guy taking this swing rat cheer? Key components:
- Stands tall at the plate
- Wide shoulders, narrow hips, body closed
- Spine-rending, Canseco-like torque of the upper body with bat followthrough cracking him in the back (exploiting the pecs)
- Notice that the belt buckle stays closed to RF, as Saunders' should (in mirror image), and yet the lead shoulder lands in Oslo to collect its peace prize
- Low followthrough, on top of the ball
Oh, very well. Below is the money screen grab from the above vid. Dig the static lower body and the cold fusion occurring above the waist. This is what I was swearing up-and-down that Matt Tuisasopo would be doing. I do not know whether G-Money recalls our debate at all. :-P
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That's Mike Piazza's swing, and Morse has the same Bret Boone-like propensity to go yard the other way. Leading the article is his 2012 HR tracker.
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=== The Swing, to LF ===
Getting the bat out in front, tell me this vid doesn't remind you of Richie Sexson. The static lower body, the James Paxton pike-grounded front leg, the extreme topspin, the chin bounce into the dirt, it's all Richie.
Sexson give ya 35-45 homers a year in his prime. Morse has a much higher batting average, though not a higher OBP.
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We don't say that Michael Morse is a great player. It's that he intelligently exploits his special-class UPPER body strength to take the lower body out of the equation. Fewer moving parts, much simpler to synch the machine to the incoming energy. This is Billy Butler's secret also. If you're strong enough to be able to do that, it's a tremendous advantage.
I guess if you're 7'6" tall and can dunk without jumping, it makes the timing easier. Good work if you can get it.
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You might ax, why isn't Morse thought of as a Piazza or Sexson. Well, he's not as talented, so the peak of his career arc will not last for 15 years like Piazza's did. Morse's highwater mark was 4, 5 years of 130 OPS+'s. Good on him.
You know how labels are. It's still impossible for Seattleites to think of Raul Ibanez as a MOTO hitter; he was that guy who used to hit .219 for us at age 27. Morse was labeled, and after he got as good as the Billy Butlers of the game, we just couldn't adjust. I still can't, can you?
::shrug:: he's slugging five hunnerd. Life. In pitcher's parks. He's got the chest, the guns and he's got the swing.
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Michael Morse 501 - Dr's Prognosis
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=== Bret Boone? Mike Piazza? ===
BTW, have you ever thought about the difference between "pretty" and "beautiful"? In Greek, beauty carries with it the idea of nobility, of that which is morally sound, of that which imparts a sense of well-being.
Ugly things, you're looking forward to the moment at which you can look away. Pretty things, you're looking forward to spending some extra moments viewing them. Beautiful things, you look forward to thinking about them after you viewed them. A Japanese cherry blossom tree is not only pink, but it's lovingly cultured, it's alive, it is a reminder to us that benevolence exists.
Morse doesn't always hit 80% of his homers the other way, like he did in 2012. In 2011 his scatterchart was a pleasure to behold:
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This speaks to a very talented athlete who listened to the pitchers throwing the ball, who interacted with them harmoniously.
And you want to talk about easy power to all fields. Here is a June 24, 2011 home run, left the bat at 112 MPH, went 444 feet -- to straightaway center field. It broke up a 0-0 shutout in the 8th. The M's could use a few of 'em.
Why didn't he hit them as hard in 2012? He had a torn lat muscle, a bad thumb, a fouled-up wrist. So his MPH and homer distance were only above-average. That's hitting the ball the other way...
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=== Career Path ===
For Morse's b-ref.com comps, life was nasty, brutish and short after age 31. His comps consist of Jay Payton, Kevin Millar, and guys like that. From ages 31 to the end of his career, the ENTIRE comp set had a piddling 102 OPS+ ... for only five more years, which on that chart is pretty short.
You might protest, Morse's comps will be skewed. He arrived late, and b-ref comps go by career hits totals and stuff.
I might reply, true, but have you checked Mike Morse's EYE ratio?
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Morse is year to year. Which is fortunate, because he has one arb year left...
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=== WAR Heroes ===
The Fangraphs article summarizes Morse as a 2-win player, which is to say a Mediocre player. We went through this with Kendrys Morales. See that series if want to trudge through that barren wilderness again -- at the oasis you'll find GM's paying RBI men far in excess of their WAR estimations.
Morse can hit a ton, can hit at least as well as Justin Upton, and then it's on you to find a place to play your shiny new #3-#4 hitters. Hopefully 1B and RF for Morse -- RF against righty-stacked batting orders -- and DH for Morales. In 2013, you'd be talking 120 games apiece for Morse, Morales, Jaso and Montero, but that's cool. Spot them right and you inflate their stats.
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=== Trade Booty ===
Would Dr. D cough up Stephen Pryor or Carter Capps or Charlie Furbush for Morse? Owie. Charlie Furbush, I guess. A cleanup hitter doesn't sound like much, but try and find one some year when you're scoring 513 runs.
Lot of prospects I'd rather give up than Carter Capps, amigo. I need him to land the guy I'm going to hit between Fat Ichiro and Michael Morse.
BABVA,
Dr D
Netflix slowly climbing back to the top
Netflix stock passed the $100 per share mark this morning, for the first time since last April. The company's stock price still has a way to go to get back to its peak price of about $275 per share back in early 2011. But things are looking up for a company that has managed to weather a pretty bad year. (A year which, let us be clear, was bad because of the company's own devising.) And some analysts warn that the $100 per share price represents an overvaluation of the stock. Nevertheless, I bet there have been a lot of smiles around the Netflix corporate offices today.
Part of the boost to the stock price came with the Monday announcement that Netflix had signed a deal with Time Warner. It will only bring eight television shows into the Netflix fold, but it seems like a good sign. Maybe Netflix is finally getting its foot in the door, content wise, and more arrangements with Time Warner will follow.
- NBC: Revolution
- USA Network: Political Animals
- A&E: Longmire
- ABC: 666 Park Avenue
- FOX: Fringe
- FOX: The Following
- Chuck
- The West Wing
More attacks on marijuana
CNN has a big opinion piece up from David Frum, a CNN contributor who recently joined "a new organization to oppose marijuana legalization." Frum trots out the same tired old arguments: marijuana "damages brain development in young people." Heavy users "become socially isolated." The smoke is bad for your lungs. And the evidence "suggests" that it can trigger psychotic episodes.
Giant squid filmed for the first time
The giant squid (Archeteuthis) is one of the largest living animals, and yet we have barely ever seen it. It wasn't too long ago that the giant squid existed in the realm of pure speculation. During the whaling era when sperm whales were being killed left and right, people noticed the giant sucker marks on the whales' skin, and the huge beaks found in the whales' intestinal tracts. Knowing the ratio of sucker mark to full size in many other squid species, people scaled up and decided that these marks must be made by an immense, deep-water squid.
Mysterious nation-wide rash of Tide thefts
The first few times I heard about this, I dismissed it out of hand. But it keeps cropping up, with supporting comments from people all over the country, so I am finally willing to concede that it is A Thing. Apparently, organized shoplifting rings are targeting, of all things, jugs of Tide liquid laundry detergent.
Pulling At My Heartstrings: Thief Crow Unties Shoelaces As Distraction
This crow really has a well thought-out game plan. Step 1: Untie ladies' shoes. Step 2: Steal mini frying pan. Step 3: ??? Step 4: Profit.
Things You Should Probably Know: Why Soldiers Shoot At Enemies They Can't See
Have you ever been curious as to why soldiers, be it in film and television or in real life, always seem to be shooting at targets they can't see? Well there is a very specific reason why they do that, and it is tactically sound.