Best/Worst trades in Blue Jays history

Here we can see the stats for the entire High Desert offense. The ballpark is ridiculously hitter friendly. Johermyn Chavez is by no means bad, but great danger lies in reading too much into those numbers.

In regards to League, it had to be assumed that League was a better mid-high leverage reliever than Morrow was or could be in 2010 if SEA kept Morrow in the pen. It also undervalues starting pitching and ignores any longterm payout. Right now, League and Morrow out of the pen are a push. In the future, with Morrow under team control longer, it becomes a pretty obvious no brainer. League had just as much a problem with consistency as Morrow out of the pen, which can be seen in in his year-to-year stat lines. Last year he was brilliant. This year he’s…well, he’s the same pitcher he’s always been outside of last year: 0.5-1.0 WAR with a mid-3’s FIP.

The guys competing for the fifth spot in the rotation (like Morrow would have been), if they lose, go to the pen. There’s an error in thinking these aren’t interchangeable. Moreover, you would have to assume that Morrow was not just as good or better than Ian Snell, Jason Vargas and Doug Fister. This line of thinking is nuts. Fister is Jarrod Washburn, massively benefiting from Safeco Field (look at the .62 spread between his FIP and his xFIP—home run suppression in action). Ian Snell has a similar skill set to Morrow, but Morrow does all of the good things better. Also, Ian Snell literally costs 10x as much as Brandon Morrow, which makes him a sunk cost and a really asinine investment.

League is a reliever and offers no upside beyond that; Morrow is a starter and continues to offer upside beyond this year. If he gets arm fatigue, whatever, put him in the pen and let him collect the 0.5-1.0 WAR per year that he was collecting before this year. For relief purposes, the Brandons are interchangeable pieces. Because Morrow can be a starter, he is inherently more valuable than League.

Johermyn Chavez remains the wild card in this deal, but even if he becomes a league average contributor (in, what, 4 years…maybe…hopefully…?), at that point he’s contributing ~2 wins per year to the M’s roster. And based on the hitting prospects that bust out of High Desert (Christ, look at those park factors)!, those aren’t favorable odds.

Morrow has a career FIP out of the pen of 4.19 without adjusting for seasonal norms. In 118.1 innings pitched, that works out to ~1.2 WAR in two seasons, or a 0.6 WAR reliever. Prior to this year, League’s career FIP was 4.40 in 222.1 IP for a WAR of 1.5, which is 0.3 WAR more than Morrow in 100 more innings pitched. There is literally no way to justify this trade by saying the Mariners needed a high leverage reliever. They had one in Brandon Morrow.

The Jays fleeced the Mariners on this deal. This isn’t because I love Brandon Morrow (though I do). This is because the Jays got greater absolute value out of the deal by a pretty wide margin.