Archive for Mike Morse

Going into the season, Davey Johnson, Mike Rizzo, and the rest of the Washington Nationals’ decision makers certainly expected to get strong production from their first basemen and that’s exactly what happened. Nationals’ first basemen combined to hit .285/.355/.547 with 40 HR, 118 RBI, and even a single, solitary stolen base. That .902 OPS was the third highest mark in baseball behind the Tigers — the honorable Prince Fielder presiding — and the Reds pair of Joey Votto and Todd Frazier, though the Nationals were the only team to break the 40 home run barrier. So all went exactly according to plan as Washington changed the old saying around to “first in war, first in peace, first in the NL East.”

Except it wasn’t nearly so simple as that. Read the rest of this entry »

At the end of each fantasy season, I always like to do what few fantasy sites/writers ever do for their readers.  I like to hold myself accountable.  You need to know whether you are getting sound advice and I need to know where I need to step up my game.  So with that, I like to go back throughout the year, both spring and in-season, and see just how successful I was in offering up advice.    When I saw Mike Podhorzer’s look back at his 20 Bold Predictions, I knew it was time to serve myself up as well.

Read the rest of this entry »

Most controversial players could be looked at from two different angles. We have plenty of tools at our disposal, but when the tools say different things, we don’t always know exactly where to focus. In order to help you see both sides of these players, RotoGraphs will be pubbing contrasting opinions on some interesting players in the next few weeks. Howard Bender gave us the positive aspects of Mike Morse on Saturday. Today it’s time to be negative.

To be perfectly clear, if Mike Morse is on your waiver wire still, he’s certainly a playable dude. To some extent, the gains he’s made so far are enough to put him on your bench and include him in your corner infield / outfield mix. At the very least, it looks like you’ll get some power value from him if he’s free.

But should you trade for him? Owners might be looking to sell high, and if he were to continue his current production, he might make for a sneaky buy-high. There are reasons to doubt that he can continue to do what he’s doing right now.

First, let’s look at the batting average. Morse has a .355 BABIP. Even though he’s the proud owner of a .349 career major league BABIP, that number has come in only 882 career plate appearances, and BABIP doesn’t usually stabilize until you’re talking multiple years of historical data. It just makes more sense to trust his .331 xBABIP. So there’s some batted ball luck contributing to his batting average.

But there’s more there. Morse is a bit of a swing-and-misser. He has a 27.2% strikeout rate this year (24.3% career), and a 12.1% swinging strike rate (8.5% is average). Those aren’t numbers normally associated with strong batting averages. Among qualified batters this year, Drew Stubbs‘ .266 batting average is the highest batting average put up by a player with a 27% strikeout rate or higher. Adam Jones does have a 12.3% swSTR% and a nice batting average, but one look at his 1.47 GB/FB ratio (compared to Morse’s 1.00) should set off some alarm bells. Jones puts the ball on the ground and utilizes his speed to overcome some of his contact issues. Morse has a career 2.9 speed score, and 5.0 is average.

Okay, so Morse may not have as nice of a batting average going forward. He may not even hit .280 if he continues to strike out this often. The worst-case batting average is only playable if the newfound power sticks around. Will it?

The one nice thing is that Morse, though he didn’t begin his major league career with power, has been slowly adding to that portion of his game. Starting with his trade to the Nationals in 2009, he’s begun hitting more fly balls, striking out more, and hitting for more power. Looks good, right?

Except that Morse was 27 in 2009. His minor league ISO was .154 – in ten seasons and over 3000 plate appearances. Morse had one life before this one, and in that one, he was a light-hitting middle infield prospect. We like to think that he’s shown power for three straight seasons now, but his combined plate appearance total for all three of those years is 545. That’s just short of the 550 plate appearances that Pizza Cutter recommended when evaluating ISO power.

So to recap, Morse has a shaky batting average that might dip as far as .260. He looks to have power that should at least result in a home run total in the mid-20s, but there’s still the long history of light hitting behind him. Of course, Jose Bautista has shown us that late power blooms are possible, but Morse has developed in a less explosive way and his upside seems more muted. If you got him for free, congratulate yourself. If you’re considering acquiring him using actual pieces of value, investigate yourself. Or at least read these two pieces before your make your decision.

RotoGraphs is embarking on a series of player pro/con debates in an effort to thoroughly cover players that are particularly popular in either a positive or negative way.  Today, I’ll be discussing the pros of Nationals 1B/OF Mike Morse and Eno Sarris will tackle the cons on Monday.

The title of this post actually says it all and if I wanted to just type out his batting line over the last few weeks with the phrase, “nuff said,” that would probably cover it.  But for the sake of argument, and knowing that Eno will shred me if I don’t come up with enough evidential proof as to why Mike Morse is, indeed, fantasy gold, we’ll go a little further. Read the rest of this entry »

Looking for outfield help with some pop to spruce up your fantasy roster?  Got a guy on your team mired in a slump and could stand to ride the pine for a week or two?  Deeper league owners should already be wise to these players (if you’re not, you’re probably sitting in last and could stand to pay some attention), but if you’re in a relatively shallow league, you might want to consider grabbing one of them.  Whether it’s to replace an injured Matt Holliday for a few games or a slumping Alex Rios for a couple of weeks, both of these guys can contribute, atleast for the short run. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s the final final day that teams can trade players, so there will be some post-deadline analysis coming. Here are a couple guys that are more sure things, as they are already on their teams and we have some historical data to analyze. Then again, there’s plenty of historical data that suggests that Jeff Francoeur and Manny Delcarmen are not good pickups no matter what team they are on.

Marcus Thames, Yankees (7% owned)
The book on Thames is that he mashes left-handers, and his platoon splits back that up. In 781 plate appearances against lefties, he has an .860 OPS that is eminently useful. Tom Tango’s the book says that we should regress his performance against lefties against 2200 plate appearances for right-handed batters, and his minor league stats going back to 2005 don’t show this same split, so we are justified in being skeptical. On the other hand, Thames is getting most of his at-bats against lefties and his team obviously believes he can hit southpaws best. This might sound like bad news – Thames is on a crowded team, and there are fewer lefties in baseball than righties – but it’s not. Predictable playing time is useful, since most fantasy teams have benches. Put Thames on your bench, and he’ll play once Lance Berkman comes back anyway. You see, Curtis Granderson has a split in the other direction, which makes moving Brett Gardner over to center and playing Thames in the outfield the probable course of action for the Yankees against southpaws. Finding an .800+ OPS batter that you can slot in against lefties is nice. Finding one that has hit six home runs in the past six games is just the cherry on top.

Mike Morse, Nationals (2% owned)
Morse is battling Willie Harris, Roger Bernadina and Justin Maxwell for playing time in the Nationals’ corners right now, but there are reasons to like this former shortstop’s chances of carving out some time for himself. For one, he’s hot, with ten hits in his last 15 atbats. Another thing that Morse has in his favor is power. He’s suddenly found his power stroke since moving to the weaker league, with a .231 ISO last year and a .243 ISO this year. Of course, those numbers have only come in 240 plate appearances and are not yet statistically significant, but a quick check of his minor league ISOs shows that a definite trend is in place. Last year, he had a .219 ISO in the minor leagues, and this year at Triple-A Syracuse, he turned in a .216 ISO. He’s a little over his head right now, and he usually hits too many balls on the ground (career 34.1% flyballs) to show this kind of power, but he’s worth a shot in the deepest of leagues. Harris is a career utility player or backup type, and while Bernadina is exciting and young, Maxwell is neither as young as he used to be (going on 27 now), nor as good as we though he might be. Right now he’s just not making any contact with a 20% walk rate and a 40% strikeout rate. Morse has a chance to carve out some time for himself as the regular right fielder.

Some notes on two rarely owned first baseman, coming atcha.

Chris Davis | Rangers | 6% Owned

Picture this: One year ago, coming into draft day, I told you that Chris Davis would only be owned in 6% of leagues by the end of the next July. You would have slapped me silly, right? Since he was recalled after the Cliff Lee trade, Davis has brought his MLB K-rate down to the 25% mark, but despite an impressive LD rate, he hasn’t hit a single dinger for Texas this year. His contact% is up 10%+ this year, so he is showing some good signs. However, there is the possibility that he is consumed with not striking out and can’t focus on making hard, solid contact. He was crushing the ball in AAA, so I’d like to give him some time to put all of the pieces together. He still has a ton of power potential, but he may never get the chance to reach it. If he has a low dollar or round value in keeper leagues, he’s worth the roster spot. Otherwise, cut him loose.

Mike Morse | Nationals | 0% Owned

We talked about Morse briefly on the pod a while back, but he deserves a couple of sentences. Morse has shown power potential in the past, thanks to his 6-4 frame, and he looks to be staying healthy long enough to show off his skills. Granted, he’s in his age-28 season, so he’s supposed to be reaching his peak right about now. His sample size is very small, but that doesn’t make the numbers he’s already put up any less impressive. Morse is the right-handed half of a RF platoon in Washington, so his playing time won’t stand to increase without a move. However, if Adam Dunn gets dealt, the Nats might be willing to give Morse a shot at a full time gig. He’s worth a buy in NL-only leagues if you need some help at first base or in the outfield.