The Lunatic Fringe

Michael Morse.

So, on one hand, there’s the three-year stint he had in Washington starting in 2009, where he had OPS values of .870, .910 and .791.  Not bad at all.  However, he only exceeded 102 games once in those three seasons, with 146 being a career high.

On the other hand, you have the .651 OPS last year, mostly with the Mariners, though he still hit 13 home runs.  That’s being attributed to playing hurt with a bad wrist, that apparently is healed now.

What’s real?  Hard to say.

There are so many red flags with a player like this, but it’s hard to argue with the Giants signing them. There were not a lot of left fielders on the market to begin with, and very few at that point in the offseason.  Sabean got a guy with a lot of upside without a lot of commitment.

It was encouraging to see Morse have the power to put two balls over the fence the opposite way in Springtime, even if Josh Reddick was also going over the fence to catch them.  Morse also hasn’t done much since.

It will be interesting to see how he does this year.  At the very least, his goofiness will win over a lot of fans here in San Francisco.