Written by: Raphie Cantor and Diego Solares

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This article is part of an ongoing series, Padres Trade Court. If you’re a newcomer to the series, please check out the introduction linked here.

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Order! Order! Order!

*bangs baseball bat on desk*

Padres Trade Court™️ is now in session.

Calling case No. 004 — The Friar Faithful versus Adrian Morejon. The prosecution will be arguing that Morejon should be traded away from the Padres, while the defense will argue that he should stay. Today’s prosecutor is Diego Solares, and the defense is Raphie Cantor.

The Case for a Trade

When Morejon signed with the Padres back in that luxurious 2016-2017 international period, he was highly coveted as the top arm in a loaded class. He signed for $11 million out of Cuba and several evaluators believed in the southpaw to be a top-of-the-rotation type of arm for the Padres once he reached the big leagues.

Nobody is going to deny that Morejon’s pure stuff is special. His fastball typically sits between 95-97 mph, he throws two disgusting changeups, and his breaking ball is a high spin pitch with ridiculous vertical break. He commands the zone, throws a ton of strikes, and it’s pretty obvious that he has legit feel for himself on the mound.

But the one thing holding Morejon back, like so many other young pitchers before him, is his inability to stay healthy over the course of a full professional season. Since he came over from Cuba, Morejon has never pitched more than 60 innings in a season. He’s dealt with numerous injuries scattered across his body and there is legitimate red flags around him. It doesn’t help that Morejon is only 6-foot and roughly 175 pounds, which isn’t really an ideal build for a pitcher in today’s game.

The talent is there, but Morejon’s durability issues likely point to a full-time transition into a relief role. The Padres will give him every opportunity to earn a spot in their rotation of the future and prove that he is capable of doing so, but injuries may win out in the end. Morejon broke into the big leagues as an opener last season and he was also working as an opener in Double-A with the Sod Poodles. His stuff will certainly play in the bullpen but starters are still more valuable, even in this day and age.

While trading Morejon and giving up on him so early might be a mistake, it could also be the ideal time to move on from him. He will be 21 years old for all of next season and there’s still some hope that he can cement himself as a long-term starting pitcher by putting these injuries behind him.

Moving on from Morejon just to move on from him doesn’t make sense. However, including him in a deal for an impact big leaguer that could push this team towards playoff contention would be the right way to go about this. He still has some prospect pedigree and other organizations across the league may still believe in the talent that’s clearly there. Moving on from Morejon may hurt, but it makes sense in the right deal.

The Defense

We live in a transitory period of baseball history. The sabermetric revolution has transformed the game. The days are gone of scouts deciding whether or not to draft players based on intangibles such as the cut of their jaw line or the looks of their significant other. But there are some things from the old times that will just never die. For instance, batting average has been recognized as a stat that paints a small and skewed picture of a hitter’s total ability, with modernists instead favoring stats like on-base plus slugging (OPS). Yet, batting average is still widely used in common parlance for baseball fans, regardless of its flaws.

In a similar vein, earned run average (ERA) can be viewed as the end-all be-all statistic for pitchers. And if you look at Morejon’s 2019 ERA in the major leagues, I wouldn’t blame you if you gasped, yelped, or even shed a tear. 10.13 -- double digits. It’s an astronomical figure. And it may partially explain why the pundits have devalued Morejon’s potential value. He does not appear in MLB Pipeline’s Top 100 prospects for 2020, a list in which he once held a No. 46 ranking after the 2018 season. His future value on Fangraphs was downgraded from 50 to 45+ after his 2019 performance. This perceived decline in Morejon weakens his trade value.

But if you look closer at Morejon’s numbers from last season, there’s much less cause for concern. First of all, that 10.13 ERA he posted in the bigs has a small sample size of eight innings. Morejon’s fielding-independent pitching (FIP), a stat which seeks to numerically replicate ERA while removing the effects of the defense surrounding a pitcher, was a much more reasonable 3.71 within those same eight innings. During Morejon’s performance in AA last season, where he threw a more substantial 36 innings, Morejon’s ERA and FIP were 4.25 and 3.59, respectively.

On top of that, Morejon’s ratios of strikeouts per nine innings (K/9), walks per nine innings (BB/9), and home runs allowed per nine innings (HR/9) were all above league average for relievers across both levels in which he played last season. Morejon is a good pitcher who needs more time in the bigs to establish himself. But why specifically does he need to remain on the Padres to do so?

As things stand now, the Padres will have an excellent bullpen in 2020, but there are many question marks surrounding their rotation. Garrett Richards represents a high-risk, high-reward investment on the part of Padres’ GM AJ Preller after Richards had Tommy John surgery. Dinelson Lamet is also coming off of an injury-shortened 2019 season.

Though Chris Paddack will likely have his innings limit lifted in his sophomore season, it remains to be seen how this starting rotation will sustain itself through the dog days of summer. As the second half rears its ugly head and the Padres hopefully find themselves in wild card contention, the team will need a pitcher who can consistently chew up innings and take the burden off of both the starting rotation and the bullpen, which will see a lot of action this season.

Morejon has all the makings of a great opener, a role which he dabbled in last season during his time in the majors. Specifically, I would want to match up Morejon as the opener on days when either Richards or Lamet are slated to pitch late in the season. Morejon is a southpaw who carries a fastball that sits at 96 MPH and can touch 98 MPH frequently, paired with an excellent changeup that dips into the mid-80s. Conversely, Richards and Lamet are both hard-throwing righties who pair their electric fastballs with devastating sliders.

The mix of opposite-handed pitchers with different breaking balls will be disrupting to opposing hitters. It makes platooning against the Padres very difficult on these designated opener days, and means that Richards and Lamet will get to throw less, and in higher-leverage innings later in games.

Morejon is a great prospect who has a future on the Padres. His fundamental stats are solid, despite perceived hiccups in his transition to the majors that dampen his trade value. He’ll likely start the season in Triple-A El Paso, a good place to get back in rhythm. Should the Padres be playing meaningful baseball after the All-Star break, Morejon could provide much needed relief to a fatigued rotation as the Padres make a push for October.

Credit to FriarWire for the Featured Image