Question time: Which player in Blue Jays history did you have the highest hopes for, but didn’t live up to your expectations?

We seem to be slow for news at the moment, so let’s ask a question. We did the positive end of this question last week, so this time: Which player in Blue Jays history did you have the highest hopes for, but didn’t live up to your expectations?

There are a number of ways you can go, with this question, but I’m picking Brandon Morrow.

We traded Brandon League and Johermyn Chavez to Seattle to get Morrow. The Mariners couldn’t seem to decide if they wanted Morrow to be a starter or a reliever. The Jays decided he was a starter and stuck to their guns.

His first season, as a Jay, 2010, pitching coach Bruce Walton tinkered with his delivery some and tried to get him throwing strikes. It didn’t go great, he finished with a 4.49 ERA, but struck out 10.9 batters per 9 innings. The next year the Bruce worked with him to throw more ‘quality strikes’, but he still wasn’t very successful, putting up a 4.72 ERA. 2012, Morrow put it all together, he had a 2.96 ERA. It looked like we’d have a star pitcher for years to come.

After that, things fell apart, with a mess of injuries and ineffectiveness in those rare moments when he was healthy enough to pitch.

There were great moments, the biggest was August 8th, 2010, when he came within an out of a no-hitter, striking out 17 along the way. It might have been the best pitching performance I’ve ever seen. He was so good, I thought there would be more shots at no-hitters in his future. When he was on, he seemed unhittable.

He’s had some good moments in the bullpen (pitching in every game of last year’s World Series stands out) since leaving the Jays, but he’s only had a total of 123 innings in the past four seasons.

Who would you pick?