Trades Ten Years Later - Logan Morrison for Carter Capps
Mariners receive: Logan Morrison. Marlins receive: Carter Capps.
Welcome back to the early launch of “Trades Ten Years Later,” the world’s most self-explanatory sports blog! The third post is finally in the wheelhouse, featuring two players known more for idiosyncrasies than their scant on-field production. An upcoming schedule can be found at the end of the post.
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The Names: Seattle Mariners receive: Logan Morrison. Miami Marlins receive: Carter Capps.
The Team Context: The Seattle Mariners had yet to be remotely good in the 2010s, finishing at 71-91 in 2013. It was reasonable to think that was about to change. There were bright spots in Seattle if you knew where to look - Hisashi Iwakuma had nearly won the Cy Young in his second year stateside, franchise icon Felix Hernandez was in the midst of five straight All-Star selections, and a farm system ranked second in baseball ahead of the season had begun graduating players to the majors. Most significantly, the Mariners had just made the splash of the decade a couple weeks before, signing Jay Z client Robinson Cano to a 10-year, $240 million contract that served as a clear signal of intent to win now. However, the three guys named in this paragraph were the only three players on the roster with guaranteed contracts on the books entering 2014, giving the team room to continue pursuing upgrades.
The Miami Marlins had just completed their second season under that moniker, having previously been the Florida Marlins until their move to Marlins Park (now known as loanDepot Park). Much of the Marlins’ recent context had been dominated by this stadium move. The 1993 expansion team enjoyed immediate success with World Series championships in 1997 and 2003, but each of these titles was followed in short order by fire sales in which stars of the team were traded to reduce expenses, purportedly resulting from the revenue disadvantage they faced as tenants in the Miami Dolphins’ stadium. After threatening to relocate if the team could not secure a stadium in South Florida with public assistance, the Marlins eventually entered into a controversial agreement with Miami-Dade County to build Marlins Park ahead of the 2012 season. In anticipation of the new ballpark, the Marlins spent like the world was ending. The team splurged on free agents like Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle, Heath Bell, and even made a run at Albert Pujols before he signed in Anaheim. The Marlins actually offered Pujols more money than the Angels did, but failed to secure his signature because they were unwilling to include a full no-trade clause.
This contract provision would have been tested quickly, as the Marlins immediately disappointed in 2012. Before the new stadium smell had faded and with plenty of county tax dollars left to collect, the Marlins’ best and most expensive players had been shipped off, leaving fans with a sculpture and a collection of misfits that would do their best to win baseball games in 2013. They mostly failed, losing 100 games while only scoring 513 runs, good for fewest in baseball and the fewest in any 162-game Marlins season (the 1993 expansion season, with 581 runs, is in second). These were the best 5 hitters on the 2013 Marlins, ranked by rWAR:
23-year old Giancarlo Stanton (2.8 in 504 PA)
21-year old Christian Yelich (1.6 in 273 PA)
31-year old Ed Lucas(???) (1.1 in 384 PA)
22-year old Marcell Ozuna (0.9 in 291 PA)
23-year old PITCHER Henderson Alvarez (0.5 in 35 PA)
That nightmarish list obviously omits the numerous sub-replacement level players taking at-bats on the 2013 Marlins. The team combined for 0.6 rWAR from its batters (0.0 if we remove the 41 plate appearances of Alvarez and fellow pitcher Brian Flynn).
The Player Context: One of those 2013 sub-replacement level players, Logan “LoMo” Morrison, was drafted by the Marlins in the 22nd round of the 2005 Draft out of Northshore High School in Slidell, Louisiana; one of four high schools in the United States called “Northshore” but the only one to spell it as one word. He played a season at Albert Pujols’ old stomping grounds of Maple Woods Community College (a campus of the Kansas City CC system) prior to signing with the Marlins based on their 2005 selection; this is apparently a common enough practice to have a name (“draft-and-follow”). His performance ticked up as he elevated through the minors, eventually becoming the Marlins #2 prospect ahead of the 2010 season (ranked behind a “Michael Stanton” who we haven’t heard much from since). LoMo lit up the minor leagues in 2010 and played in the MLB Futures Game before a similarly-strong MLB debut, where he hit comfortably above-average and made it to the NL leaderboards with 7 triples in 62 games.
Morrison became a fan favorite in Florida during the 2011 season, continuing to slug while connecting with fans through a robust Twitter presence. But the same casual everyman personality that endeared him to the Marlins fanbase often drew the ire of the Marlins front office, from the Twitter habit that team president David Samson called “very scary” to concerns about his professionalism. Tensions boiled over in the 2011 season after Morrison skipped a team event with season ticket holders, acting on advice from relief pitcher and union representative Wes Helms. After the event, Helms was released (ending his career) and Morrison was sent down to AAA despite being one of the team’s top hitters, leading him to file a grievance. Despite these tensions, Morrison was still seen as a vital part of the Marlins core going into 2012, with the team going so far as to honor his request to switch his uniform number from his last-worn 20 to 5 (which was previously retired in honor of deceased team president Carl Barger). But LoMo observed the 2012 Season From Hell appropriately, experiencing right knee pain that culminated in a surgery, ending his 2012 in July and delaying the start of his 2013 until June. With Morrison entering salary arbitration for the first time and the organization far away from winning, he was widely expected to be traded that winter.
Carter Capps attended the University of Mt. Olive before being selected by the Mariners in the 3rd round of the 2011 draft. Capps was lightly-heralded, as evidenced by this 2011 Mariners draft recap that refers to a previous article about Capps, Kevin Cron, and John Hicks (the article only discusses the latter two, not mentioning Capps at all). He worked his way through the minors rapidly, enchanting Mariners diehards with the unusual pairing of electric stuff and bizarre mechanics. As he became more established in professional baseball, he became a cult hero for his unique hop-step delivery that incorporated a push off the rubber followed by a “toe-drag” that resulted in Capps releasing the pitch late enough to meaningfully reduce a hitter’s reaction time. I’m going to include a .gif because words can’t really capture what this little freak was doing:
While piling up strikeouts and dominating in the minors, Capps allowed his MLB opponents to slash .302/.366/.512 against him in 2013, an .878 OPS that would have been just ahead of 4th-place NL MVP finisher Matt Carpenter’s .873 for that season.
The Trade: With his grievance against the team pending and mediocre first baseman Garrett Jones signed to a two-year deal, LoMo was practically wearing a price tag by the time of MLB’s winter meetings. Several teams were rumored to be interested in Morrison by MLB’s newsbreakers, with the Mariners not among them. Hindsight suggests this might have been an effort by the Marlins to generate a bidding war for Morrison, as the series of reports consists of vague reports of interest from non-Mariners team followed by repudiations of that interest from anyone specifically asked.
The Reaction: The smattering of Marlins fans that remained were unhappy to see LoMo go, while acknowledging that he hadn’t quite met expectations in recent years. Mariners fans were not too excited at the acquisition of Morrison, questioning his fit on a roster that had just signed Corey Hart and already featured Justin Smoak, a similarly-profiled young lefty slugger who was defensively limited to 1B. Morrison had slightly outproduced Smoak thus far in their young careers, but it was very very close. Carter Capps’ departure received a mixed reaction, with some espousing their love and some pointing out the unfortunate reality that he “could not get a lefty out to save his life” and “was a train wreck last year.”
However, Mariners fans were joined by national media in skepticism as to whether these moves would be enough to meaningfully contend in 2014. Seattle GM Jack Zduriencik almost immediately confirmed reports that the Morrison acquisition brought the Mariners close to their payroll limitation, capping further improvements that could be made. The combination of Smoak, Morrison, and Hart also led to questions about how an already-bad defense in 2013 would line up on a baseball field that only had one first base. The light return of Capps, viewed as a live but unpredictable relief arm with closer potential, was seen as a byproduct of the limited market for a player with what had shown to be limited talents.
The Results: In the broadest terms, each player in this deal had an injury-plagued stint with their new club before being traded elsewhere. Morrison lasted 20 at-bats in Seattle (hitting three singles) before a hamstring injury knocked him out of the lineup until June. His return coincided with an injury to Justin Smoak, allowing Morrison to ultimately win the battle for first base when Smoak was sent to Toronto after the season. Finally entrenched as a starter and generally healthy, LoMo proceeded to post a yawn-provoking .225/.302/.383 slash line in 146 games as the Mariners regressed from a promising 2014 to go 76-86 in 2015. Morrison was traded to Tampa Bay after the season.
If we’re being objective, Carter Capps probably provided less “value” to the Marlins than Logan Morrison provided for the Mariners, but it certainly doesn’t feel that way. Capps started 2014 in the minors and experienced a shoulder injury midway through his season, limiting him to 20.1 innings at the MLB level and leaving the jury out on the results of the trade at the one-year mark. In 2015, Carter Capps exploded into the online consciousness with an exaggerated version of his hop-step delivery that immediately invoked questions as to whether his pitching motion was legal. Capps leapt (yes) to the top of the rate-stat leaderboards with a 49.2% strikeout rate in his 31.0 MLB innings and seemed to fulfill his promise as an elite reliever until an August elbow strain, initially expected to hold him out for two weeks, ultimately resulted in Tommy John surgery the following March. Capps was traded to San Diego at the 2016 trade deadline while rehabbing from surgery, ending his Marlins tenure with 51.1 tantalizing innings as box score monuments to what could have been.
The Aftermath: Carter Capps emerged in 2017 Spring Training with the Padres and leaned into the “circus performer” aspect of his sporting identity, exhibiting a revised delivery that involved a SECOND hop forward. At the same time, MLB had “clarified” its rules surrounding illegal deliveries in a manner seemingly designed to crack down on weirdo motions like Capps’s. While Capps was able to return to the majors in San Diego, he didn’t take the stuff with him - his strikeout rate fell to 14.3% in his 12.1 MLB innings. Capps underwent surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome at the end of the 2017 season.
While he was able to make appearances in the minors for San Diego in 2018, Capps credits the rule change and its inconsistent enforcement from umpires with ending his career, saying that “I was a high-leverage reliever, and you can’t put me out there as a potential balk. I can’t balk in the winning run.” In November 2021, he was named the pitching coach at Seattle University, where he continues to be on staff today. His final MLB pitching appearance came against Kristopher Negron in a 10-6 victory over Arizona, ending an inning that he began with his final MLB strikeouts against Adam Rosales and Chris Iannetta.
Like most players traded to the Rays, Logan Morrison showed some improvement in 2016, a year in which he perhaps coincidentally quit using Twitter. His breakout year came in 2017, where he tied for 5th in the AL with a career-high 38 home runs. Incredibly, one of the guys he tied with for 5th place was the BizzaroLoMo himself, Toronto’s Justin Smoak - neither player hit more than 30 home runs in any other year of their career. Despite being tied for 2nd most home runs in MLB at the time of the Home Run Derby, Morrison was not selected to compete in the event. The typically loquacious Morrison did not hesitate to rip this decision, saying of Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez “Gary's a great player, but he shouldn't be in the Home Run Derby” and hammering the point home with “I remember when I had 14 home runs. That was a month and a half ago.”
LoMo’s Tampa magic wore off quickly, and his subsequent stop in Minnesota was derailed by a hip injury resulting in surgery. Morrison signed minor league deals with the Yankees and Phillies in 2019, gaining some MLB playing time with the latter, then played 9 games with the Brewers in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season before being released. He performed well in his final stint of affiliated baseball as a 33-year-old playing for the AAA Louisville Bats before playing with the Atlantic League’s High Point Rockers for part of 2021 and all of 2022. After having the number 5 unretired by the Marlins, LoMo returned to wearing number 20 with the Mariners, then wore 7 with the Rays, 99 with the Twins, 8 with the Phillies, and 21 with the Brewers. His final MLB at-bat was a flyout to right field against Joel Kuhnel in a 9-3 victory over the Reds, a game that Justin Smoak also started for Milwaukee.
Upcoming trades:
December 16, 2013:
White Sox receive: Matt Davidson
Diamondbacks receive: Addison Reed
December 18, 2013:
Red Sox receive: Jonathan Herrera
Rockies receive: Franklin Morales and Chris Martin
December 18, 2013 [will probably be posted later because otherwise there are no trades until December 30]:
Braves receive: Ryan Doumit
Twins receive: Sean Gilmartin