If a game 55% of the way through the season can be a "must win," yesterday's game was of that ilk.  Win and we take 3 of 4 from the Angels, head into the All-Star Break with some juice and begin to sniff the Wild Card race again.

Lose, and it foretells of the long and likely meaningless dog days of August-September.

We lost.  I'm now resigned to a "wait 'till next year" stance.  I will tie steelhead flies and look forward to deer season, but I won't dream of a playoff berth........much.

I do stand hard, btw, by my 3-week old assertion that we need a managerial change. By all accounts Lloyd McClendon is a class act, a fine man, and a terrific organizational guy, but he isn't a top-notch MLB manager.  Since our 7-game losing streak back at the beginning of June, we have gone 17-17, basically alternating 1 or 2 wins with 1 or 2 losses.  It isn't enough.  We needed something more.  I'm not sure McClendon is the guy (and I think I would personally like the guy a whole lot) to get it done.

But I digress.

I'm here to write about Logan Morrison (again) and his amazing consistency, as well as to discuss whether we should find a trade partner (if one exists) and swap him out.

Logan Morrison is only 27 years old.  He will play in the bigs for another 7-9 years, likely.  He will be a solid league-average hitter....but he is never going to pack a team for a season.  He's not that kind of hitter....he has his hot streaks (everybody does) and his polar streak (his are especially frosty) but, season in and season out, he is amazingly consistent.........in a bit of a plodding sort of way.

Listen, he could figure it all out; lots of MLB hitters plod until they are 28, but Morrison is so consistent that I think we have an amazing record of what to expect, by and large, moving forward.  That likely future has some value, mind you, but it is relatively limited.  Morrison is a FA in 2017, he will be fairly affordable.  Would we invest in him then?  If not, then now may be the time to move him.  Detroit could use a 1B, for example.

Emerson once wrote "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."  I don't know if Morrison is foolish or has a little mind, but he's consistent!  To wit:

In each of his 6 MLB seasons LoMo has vs. RHP batting average splits that run between .236-.261, OBP vs RHP splits that are from.325-.359* and Slg% vR's from .398-.460**.

Well, last year his vR OBP was just .296 (thus the *) and in .11 he homered his was to a .495 Slg% (thus the **).

By and large, minus a homer or two, you can bet on him hitting RHP just about like he's hitting it this year:  .252-.328-.460.  His homers are up a bit, so make the Slg% .440 and you have the quintessential vR Morrison.  Solid, but no Speed Racer.  To put that in perspective, last season ('14) there were 28 MLB players with more than 75 games at 1B.  4 of them OPS'ed, against all pitchers, north of .900.  8 were between .800 and .900 and 1 was a near twin of Morrison's vR .788 in '15. Remember, those numbers were against all pitching, not just the guys they had the slpit advantage against.  Morrison's numbers vR this year, which are nearly his career numbers, make him not quite league average 1B....Even when you compare his vR #'s to the total #'s of everybody else.

If you factor in Morrison's vL numbers, then you generally see him fall to below the 1B mid-line.  But here is something interesting about Morrison, once in a while he has a rip-roaring season vs lefties.......all driven by red hot BABIP numbers.  In his rookie season, which remains his best statistically, Morrison had a .926 vL OPS, fueled by a .446 BABIP!  Yikes!  Last year his .846 vL OPS was driven by a .389 BABIP.  Yikes, again!!

By contrast, he has only once had a vR BABIP north of .287.  That was a rookie year .311.  Since then he's been .257, .254, .287, .250, and .249.  His vL #'s have been .446, .284, .228, .260, .389, and .217.

Go ahead and tell me about batted ball velocity and how Morrison rips it, but his BABIP is particularly low....minus his weird vL seasons in '10 and '14.  I think he sacrificed more than the normal amount of chickens during those summers. 

So we have a league average hitter (right at 100 OPS) playing a position that historically demands more than a league average hitting ability.  In running him out there, we're hoping to catch one of his normal vR seasons (say, this year) AND one of his red hot vL years.  He's put such a season together just once, way back in '10, his rookie year.  That year he ran a 123 OPS+.   In '11 he nearly did it, and had the 116 OPS+ to prove it. Since then.....largely a "Meh!"

But if you have a solid vL partner to go with Morrison, then you have a guy who is 66% of pretty valuable.  LoMo has OPS'ed between .778-.827 vR in 4 of his six seasons.  Such a 1B, and at the cheap price Morrison has cost, is fairly nice.  In his 2 crummy vR seasons ('12 and '14), Morrison OPS'ed .723 and .695.

Oh, I will add that LoMo has developed and become a very nice defensive 1B.  There is value there.

Those are the facts, ma'am.

Now the question is whether we offer him up in swap, bring him back for '16, or figure he's our guy for the next 3-4 seasons and sign him now.

OK, option #3 above would be premature and silly.  We're not signing him for a 3-year extension right now.  But if you don't, and he comes back in '16 (option #2) and he hits, then he's going to get $10M+ a year (see Billy Butler) and you may not want to pay him that.  If you bring him back next year and he doesn't hit, then you might be able to extend him for a couple, on the cheap, betting that he will rebound.  But all of that is speculative stuff.  Trading him, here and now, could probably be done and our path ahead would be a bit clearer:  Find a replacement.

Montero and/or Choi might fit the bill.  Trumbo could be the guy.  You get the idea.  There are places you could go and the odds of them hitting like Morrison wouldn't be overly long.

But...it is just possible that Morrison figures it out at 28 and  becomes an Olerud-redux.  Well, not really, but how about an Olerud junior?  OK, the possibility of that isn't even great.

For my money, I'm "trying" to get trade value out of Morrison right now.  But you're likely not getting anybody except prospects who have top ends about like Logan Morrison.  Were we to be able to get a young CF...well, that would be just ducky.  But teams don't normally give such guys sway, do they?

Choi, Montero, Kivlehan, Ackley, Romero, lions and tigers and bears, oh my.  We have guys in-house who stand in line to get a chance to replace Morrison.  And that isn't even counting Trumbo.  Are any of them ready for fulltime 1B duty?  Is one of them a Speed Racer in '16? Actually it is likely one of them is.....but which one is the question?  Would you bet on that field in '16 or bet on Morrison?

Oh...and I didn't even mention the D. J. Peterson wild card bet.  The Deej has hit .236-.307-.392 in basically a full season of AA.  We may yet bump him to AAA this year, but he probably isn't our MLB 1B in '16.

And if we wanted a high OBP, doubles-hitting 1B in the Olerud ilk, we would give the huge glove to Pizano.

We have options, outside of Morrison.

There you go. That's the Logan Morrision rundown.  He's something, but not something special.  He's a safe bet, but not a hot rod.  He lacks that season-long 5th gear.  Certainly we can get something for him.....but is it shinier than he is?  I don't know....unless it is that nice young CF'er.

I'm no huge Morrison fan.  He was a great get, costing us nothing.  I'm not married to him, however.  But, to tell you the truth, I'm not sure I just don't keep him and pair him with a RH 1B bat in '16.  That may likely be the most value we get out of him.  Logan Morrison was a 22nd round draft pick back in '05.  He has already exceeded expectations.  I'm willing to keep him for another year and hope he exceeds expectations in '16, too.  But he needs a Robin to his Batman, most likely.

Minus something very pretty from Detroit (Morrison in tandem with Happ might bring something like that) or somesuch team, I'll hold him for now.

And I'm surprised I'm saying that.

If one of the younger guys hits it hard in a late-season call up, then Morrison could go...but he's worth less the later the season gets.  Bundle him with Happ and you could get a nice return.  Happ is making close to $10M next year, it is not likely you bring him back, anyway.

Back in November of 1864, after the presidential election of that month,  Harper's Weekly wrote someting like, "Long Abe a little longer."  

If one of the young guys rips, I'm swapping Morrison out......but I suppose I could live with Long Logan a little longer.  I would prefer the pretty package in return but I'm not sure we're getting one.  

Sigh....

Off to the fly tying bench.  Is it deer season yet?

Go team!

Moe