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You can call it a gamble.
In fact, that is exactly what Alex Anthopoulos called the trade that brings Brandon Morrow to the Blue Jays from Seattle and sends Brandon League and minor-league outfielder Johermyn Chavez to the Mariners, a deal made official Friday.
But there is gambling and then there is GAMBLING.
In this case, Anthopoulos anted up a decent reliever and a mildly interesting prospect in exchange for a potential franchise starter. It’s a risk the new Jays GM will make every time. This was definitely a lower-case gamble.
“It’s a gamble, sure,” Anthopoulos said Friday. “But from our standpoint, to include League and to include Chavez for a guy who has a chance to be a high-ceiling starter, those are the chances you have to take.”
What the Jays will try to do is rewind the clock and undo some of the damage that has been done to Morrow the past three years.
“Sometimes I think highly touted prospects that get to the big leagues early, then don’t have the success as quickly as everybody expects, people sour on them a little too quickly,” the GM said.
For a team such as Toronto, in a rebuilding mode, it makes perfect sense. And for a team such as Seattle, which is obviously in the go-zone, with a chance to overwhelm the American League West, it also makes perfect sense. They get a good reliever who has a chance to be better than just good.
Morrow brings with him an arm that Anthopoulos compares to that of A.J. Burnett. Unfortunately, Morrow’s development has been botched as badly as any high-end talent we can recall.
As the No. 5 player taken in the 2006 draft — ahead of such talents as Tim Lincecum and Clayton Kershaw — Morrow spent part of a summer in the minors and then was rushed to the bigs in 2007. He spent that season as a reliever but the following off-season refining his approach as a starter.
Then, when he got to camp, he was shifted back to the bullpen.
Later that season, he was again starting but, come 2009, he was back in the bullpen, installed as the closer. That turned into disaster and, working around some arm injuries, he was sent back to the minors to again try his hand at starting.
“I was never really allowed to develop as a starter the way I and a lot of other people thought I should be allowed to," Morrow said in an interview with the Seattle Times. “Hopefully, this new chance means I get to develop as a starter more. Changing roles has just been detrimental to me."
“Looking back on it, it may not have been the greatest thing in the world for Brandon,” said M’s GM Jack Zduriencik. “But it’s a double-edged sword. He did gain major league experience that was invaluable for him.”
Most of the Morrow machinations occurred on the watch of Zduriencik’s predecessor, Bill Bavasi.
But Zduriencik felt it was time to move on.
In a nutshell, Morrow’s problem has been control. In 197 innings, he has walked 128 batters, an average of six every nine innings. He needs to cut that in half.
In a perfect world, Morrow would probably go back to the minors and spend a season building his confidence as a starter and working on his control as well as a third pitch to go with his high-90s fastball and a knee-buckling curve. And that may yet happen. But he’s expected to be in the mix for one of the five Blue Jays rotation spots out of spring training.
“We’ll see what we have in the spring,” said Anthopoulos. “With a guy like Brandon Morrow, we’re going to do what’s best for him. We expect him to come in and compete, and win a starting spot next spring. That being said, if after seeing him and spending time with him we feel like he needs a little time, we might need to send him down.”
But don’t bet on it.