A few minutes ago, Rubie and I had this conversation via text:
Rubie: I FanShotted the Morgan trade, btw.
Me: Wait, what?
I'm guessing most you are having roughly the same reaction this morning, spitting out your Sunday brunch all over a computer screen while learning the facts of the latest Doug Melvin "no we're not...except that we are." trade.
If you missed the details, here they are: The Brewers have traded Cutter Dykstra, who we rated 16th in our Community Prospect Rankings, to the Nationals for Nyjer Morgan. And I have no idea why.
Morgan is a career .283/.344/.360 career hitter, but took a significant step back last year in his age 29 season, posting a .253/.319/.314 line. Yes, that's a .314 slugging percentage to round out a .633 OPS. Among players who posted at least 500 plate appearances in 2010, that was the fifth worst OPS in baseball:
| Player | Team | OPS |
| Cesar Izturis | BAL | .545 |
| Jose Lopez | SEA | .609 |
| Alcides Escobar | MIL | .614 |
| Ryan Theriot | CHC-LAD | .633 |
| Nyjer Morgan | WAS | .633 |
Morgan was also worse, OPS-wise, than Carlos Gomez (.655) and Yuniesky Betancourt (.692), and only slightly better than Jonathan Lucroy (.628).
So, you can make a case that Morgan immediately becomes the worst hitter on a Brewer 25 man roster that already includes some pretty poor hitters. Furthermore, though, he's not an upgrade defensively. Morgan was a +4.2 player defensively in 2010 according to UZR/150, while Gomez was worth 8.0.
The WAR numbers put a nice bow on this argument: Despite getting more playing time, FanGraphs has Morgan at 0.9 WAR in 2010, while Gomez was worth 1.1.
It's possible that Morgan is just coming off a down year, and could come back to provide some value. At the moment, though, it looks like the Brewers just acquired an older, less talented version of Carlos Gomez. I have no idea why someone would give something of value for that.
If nothing else, Corey Patterson was probably available for less.