Kendrys Morales’ Best Case Scenario
For the past year-plus, Kendrys Morales has been an expert in worst case scenarios. Injure yourself in a walkoff celebration, miss a full year in the aftermath, and see your team promote a promising young stud and acquire the best player in the league — both at your position — and you can come to define the term.
Are things looking up now? Teammates like Peter Bourjos raved at the power Morales showed in his first live batting practice in over a year on Monday. What if he gets it together? What might a best-case scenario for the 28-year-old switch-hitting Cuban first baseman look like? How could things break just right for him?
It won’t be easy, but let’s say that Morales has accrued enough karma to get exactly what he wants. First, he’d have to be completely healthy, which wouldn’t seem so incredible for a broken leg, but here we are. A healthy season would allow us to add 100 or so plate appearances to the projections, which have all taken into account his missing season and docked him playing time accordingly. Take Bill James‘ numbers and pro-rate it out to a full Morales season, and you get a .296 batting average with 28 home runs and 99 RBI. So far so good.
But of course there’s that depth chart — it’s not all about his health. Bobby Abreu and Mark Trumbo both play his ‘position,’ and both have skills of their own. One at a time.
Mark Trumbo has power and not much else, considering his lack of patience and average strikeout rate. The 26-year-old did have a stress fracture in his right foot near the end of his season, either way, and there was the brief moment where he was reportedly slow to heal and possibly ready to miss up to a month of the season. Well, the most recent news has Trumbo doing a little better, and hoping to be fully cleared for Spring Training next week. So he’s not likely to give Morales an opening in that way.
But the rumor persists that the team will try Trumbo at third base. Not everyone thinks the move will be impossible, despite the 6’4″, 220-pounder’s lack of lateral agility. And Trumbo has also played the outfield in the Minor Leagues, and with the Angels last year. Despite the fact that new GM Jerry Dipoto says the team won’t trade Trumbo, there are some tea leaves to read here: the team likes him enough to keep him for now, likes his youth and ability to fake some of the lesser demanding positions in the short-term, and doesn’t really want to award the full-time designated hitter role to Trumbo.
One down, one to go.
The 38-year-old Bobby Abreu is in full decline mode. His isolated slugging percentage hit a career low last year, mostly because of a career low in home runs per fly ball (and home runs in general). His walk rate was still excellent, but he hasn’t offered value with his glove since 2004, and now that his power is gone… he was even a real negative on the base paths for the first time in his career in 2011, despite the 21 stolen bases.
All things considered, he might still make a decent, if low-powered designated hitter, right? Well, his .253/.353/.365 slash line didn’t quite stack up to the .266/.341/.430 average DH line from last season. And the Angels are going to be a contender next year. If only that stupid option hadn’t kicked in…
There’s your window for Morales. Mark Trumbo, because of his youth and possible (comparative) agility, is your corner outfielder / infielder type, perhaps taking over for Vernon Wells if the former Jay can’t get it together, or showing enough at third base to take the job from Alberto Callaspo. Bobby Abreu is traded, or becomes a bench pinch-hitter, or fades into the night if he looks even worse in Spring Training.
And Morales takes over the DH position.
A lot of things have to break right for this to happen — that was the point, to think about how likely each break might be — but as we said before, Morales has some good luck coming. It’s not impossible, and that probably makes Morales a decent late-round gamble. After all, .300/30/100 is a pretty sweet best case scenario.
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This isn’t far-fetched at all. Morales is clearly better than Abreu and Trumbo. He’ll certainly get more at-bats than Abreu.
I know he’s not in the crowd of ML 1b/DH they have right now, but I think it’s worth mentioning that the Angels also spent their first round pick on an all bat college 1b from Utah last year, CJ Cron. Granted he has some injury concerns, but he raked in his short time last year, should be set for A+ or AA, and shouldn’t need much more than a year to be ML ready. If Morales does make it back, CJ is probably trade bait, but his presence makes that Pujols, Morales, Trumbo crowd even more crowded for 2013 – if they all stay healthy, someone is getting traded.
“How could things break just right for him?”
clever.
Why not just send Abreu on his way? He’s basically a 0 WAR player, he’s a sunk cost, nobody will trade for him. Just ditch him and be done with it.
Rather see Abreu than Trumbo, especially on a team that was highly suspect for OBP last year. They don’t really need the power
I like your style Colin.
If Morales is able to stay healthy, he’s clearly good enough to be an every day player for the Angels. I personally believe Trumbo and Abreu aren’t nearly as skilled as Morales and health is the only thing keeping this conversation alive. Morales is still only 28 years old and should be in the middle of his prime. With the addition of Pujols, the emergence of Kendrick and Aybar, as well as some younger players coming into own (Bourjos, Trout), the Angels should have an excellent offense. If Morales is batting right ahead or right behind Pujols, he should see a lot of fastballs, which I imagine he will have no trouble crushing, once he gets his timing back. I’m predicting a pretty slow start but once he gets in the groove he’ll be a no-brainer starting 1B in fantasy leagues. I’m not sure where he’s being drafted in mock drafts, but I think it’s a safe bet he’ll outproduce is ADP pretty easily.
Another difference between Morales and Trumbo is that Morales was actually a 3B when he was signed. Granted, who knows how stable that leg is at this point, but Morales would probably be a better option in the field than Trumbo.
The 3rd spot in the Angels lineup drove in 67 runs in 2011 (3 more than the lead off hitter and 16 more than the 5 th spot). If Morales stays healthy 100 rbis’s looks likely.
Heck, Pujols played 7 games at 3rd last year. He’d be a better bet than Trumbo at 3B. If the Angels are smart Morales will get full-time at-bats if he’s healthy. I still think Abreu has enough left to be more valuable than Trumbo .291 OBP. Trumbo is terrible, except he hits the ball over the fence once in a while.
I think the Angels should start Trumbo at DH and trade Morales to the A’s for Chris Carter, Brian Fuentes and a case of Rally Monkeys. Please? It would only make for fairer games if the A’s could have at least one ML ready power bat.
Obviously the angels might not be interested in dealing with the yankees, but what about offering Morales to the bombers for Romaine or another one of the Yanks good catching prospects. The Yanks could pencil Morales in for 450 plate appearances or so between 1B/DH, and the A’s can gamble on a long-term solution behind the plate.