Fix My Team...Morrow or Romero

Drew chimes in stating he has been offered a trade in his league. He currently owns Brandon Morrow and has been offered Ricky Romero in a player for player trade. He would like input on whether he should pull the trigger on this deal.

 Both are similar pitcher statistically speaking and ironically pitch for the same team. Currently Romero is slated as Toronto’s #1 SP with Morrow to fall next in the rotation. Current ADP’s have Morrow being selected on average 1 round before Romero. That leads us to some comparisons. Lets looks at last year’s performance and also for the careers of both pitchers.

	ERA	K	BB	WHIP
MORROW 2010	4.49	178	66	1.38
CAREER	4.19	9.99 K/9		1.43
ROMERO 2010	3.78	174	82	1.29
CAREER	3.99	7.31 K/9		1.41

From last year’s totals the ERA and WHIP definitely favors Romero. But looking deeper we some interesting numbers. Both pitchers faced BOS, NYY, and TB for 10 starts. 38% of Morrows starts for the year came against these 3 clubs while Romero took the hill 31% of his starts against these offensive monsters. Morrow posted a 5.07 ERA while Romero came in at 6.22 ERA. Those numbers alone speak volumes as to why I do not like to fill my team with AL East SP. If Morrow could have started 6 more games last year against inferior teams, he would have equaled Romero’s starting games number at 32. With those 6 additional starts he could have dropped his ERA and WHIP to levels nearly resembling Romero’s.  That being said let’s move onto what I target in a SP, that being K/9. Looking at career numbers in this category Morrow is clearly the most dominant. In fact, over the last 3 years, Morrow ranks 3^rd among all SP at K/9 with at least 120 IP. That equals out to 85 more Ks over the course of a 32 start season. If you are looking for W differential there is not one. Both could post 14 win seasons. WHIP and ERA will be nearly equal but those extra 85 K a year definitely pushes Morrow ahead of Romero in value. So Drew, keep Morrow and reject your other league manager’s offer for a straight up trade. Point out that Morrow will once again dominate the league in K/9 and he might sweeten up the deal for you. Good luck!!