Charlie Morton has battled injuries throughout his career that has made him as erratic as any of the players on the Pirates’ roster.
There have been moments in his career when his devastating sinker is consistently sitting down in the zone, frustrating opposing batters to no-end as they attempt to lift his pitches into the air.
There is no better example of this frustration than on June 10th when Morton threw seven shutout innings against Milwaukee. After that performance, the Brewers catcher Jonathan Lucroy said that Morton had “the best sinker in baseball, no doubt.” High praise for a pitcher, especially when it comes from a guy who catches pitches for a living.
However, there have been other moments in his career that have been directly affected by injury problems. A torn UCL in late May of 2012 required Tommy John surgery that forced him to miss the rest of the 2012 season as well as the first two months of 2013.
Morton turned in his best season as a Pirate in 2013 after returning from Tommy John. In 116 innings, he had a 3.26 ERA and led the Major Leagues with a 62.9% ground ball rate.
2014 was the season in which Morton thought he was throwing the ball as well as he ever had in his career. He was as sharp as he’s ever been mechanically, and was commanding all of his pitches. He had a 3.29 ERA through the first two months of the season, but his success was impeded in June of that year when he tore the labrum in his right hip. He tried to pitch through the pain, however he was not the same pitcher during the remainder of the season. His mechanics became out of sync and lost his consistent command. After the 2014 season, Morton had surgery after the season to repair his hip.
Once he recovered from his off-season procedure, he came into Spring Training and struggled to throw strikes because he developed bad habits while pitching through the previous season’s pain.
“By the end of the year, I watched video and I was just a mess, and I never corrected it,” Morton explained. “Then I had surgery, and then I came to Spring Training and still never corrected it.”
His Spring Trainings struggles led to an extended stay on the Disabled List, and an extended stay down in Bradenton, where he worked with Pirates’ pitching guru Jim Benedict. Morton has benefited from working with Benedict by getting his mechanics in-tune, just as he did when working with Benedict after his Tommy John surgery in 2013.
And so far this season, Morton has mimicked the pitcher he was in his 2013 season. His 61.4% ground ball rate would rank him in the top five in baseball if he had enough innings to qualify, and he has gone six innings in all but two of his nine starts. His 4.15 ERA is deceiving, as it is artificially inflated by his 0.2 inning, nine earned run disaster against the Nationals in Washington. Take away the Washington outing, and his ERA would be 2.63. His xFIP after tonight’s outing is 3.82.
“I feel like I’m pitching way better than even in 2013 right now – I’ve gotten off to a better start,” Morton exclaimed when I asked him about he feels this season compared to 2013. “I remember in 2013 I felt like I was throwing the ball okay, but I wasn’t really pitching. This year, I started pitching pretty well right out of the gate.”
His ability to be a pitcher and not just a thrower was evident in tonight’s start. Morton struggled with command of his sinker in the early innings of his outing, so he began to mix in more curve balls and change-ups, and was better able to pound the strike zone with the offerings.
“And that opened up room for my sinker, even though it wasn’t as good as it could be,” Morton said.
Without his best stuff, Morton was still able to complete six innings, while limiting the Padres to two earned runs and just five hits. He walked four batters, one intentionally, and struck out five.
Being able to trust and command his two off-speed pitches to go along with “the best sinker in baseball” will make Morton one of the more effective pitchers in the National League.
A healthy and mechanically in-tune Charlie Morton would go a long way for the Pirates in their quest to win the division. So far, the Pirates look like they are getting the 2013 version of Morton that helped them win 94 games.
