Michael Morse 1B

[Namaste]

Made it to the big leagues as a SS.

Let that blow your mind for a while.

[thatnewguy]

Would he lose in a footrace with Bartolo Colon?

[Erick]

He's been brutal.

[Jay]

Maybe we should DFA him.

[Valid]

Morse has a lifetime OPS of .800 and has really only had one bad year in his career. Chances are, he will turn things around.

[Erick]

Morse has a lifetime OPS of .800 and has really only had one bad year in his career. Chances are, he will turn things around.

It's only been a month, but he's going to have to correct that 60+ GB% of his and start hitting some balls in the air. His results so far don't seem like a case of bad luck.

[Valid]

It's only been a month, but he's going to have to correct that 60+ GB% of his and start hitting some balls in the air. His results so far don't seem like a case of bad luck.

His GB% is nearly 14 points above his career average and his FB% is nearly 11 points below it. Seems pretty fluky to me. Things will likely (hopefully) even out.

[marlinsfan24]

His GB% is nearly 14 points above his career average and his FB% is nearly 11 points below it. Seems pretty fluky to me. Things will likely (hopefully) even out.

I agree, I think Morse will regress to the mean. But I also think it's crazy to rule out he's declined. 33-years old it not old in baseball, but still.

[Valid]

I agree, I think Morse will regress to the mean. But I also think it's crazy to rule out he's declined. 33-years old it not old in baseball, but still.

There is definitely a possibility that he has lost a step, but I don't think he could have lost it this much.

[nny]

I agree, I think Morse will regress to the mean. But I also think it's crazy to rule out he's declined. 33-years old it not old in baseball, but still.

I agree that we can't just ignore it like we could with something like Yelich's false start. But generally speaking, decline has to do with lower power and more strike outs.

His strike outs are only up a tip, and while his ISO is terrible other things point to him still hitting the ball hard (same HR/FB, the stats Bob posted somewhere on here where his batted ball velocity is still really high).

But it's definitely still worrisome.

[emkayseven]

he looks incredibad at the plate right now though

[Erick]

I could be wrong, but isn't a decling FB% from a power hitter a sign of decline or is it something we should expect to regress back to the mean? I've always thought it was an indicator of bad things to come for a power hitter.

[Jay]

I could be wrong, but isn't a decling FB% from a power hitter a sign of decline or is it something we should expect to regress back to the mean? I've always thought it was an indicator of bad things to come for a power hitter.

I'd expect regression to the mean at this point in the season. I'd be more concerned if he hadn't posted flyball and linedrive percentages above his career rates last season. Not sure about it being a sign of decline in a power hitter.

[Bobbob1313]

We're talking about 50-60 batted balls at this point in the season, so the percentages aren't hugely important right now. Especially since the batted-ball data we're talking about here is largely subjective. If one or two line drives wee incorrectly logged as ground balls, it could skew the data pretty dramatically.

I'm not saying that's what is happening with Morse, just that 50-60 balls in play isn't necessarily something to be concerned about. Even from pure chance you would expect this kind of divergence in any sample this small.

It's not nothing, for sure. My question is whether it is "Morse has been bad so far" or "Morse is bad now." We can't answer that yet, so it's better to err on the side of the larger sample size.

[Jay]

I just noticed his home-away splits and his OPS away is .755 whereas home is .388. I looked at his career stats in Miami and he's been pretty good. All these stats are low sample size ~50 but it's interesting.