Morgan’s resurgence relieves one Phillies’ doubt
PHILADELPHIA » Their season will soon end, and the Phillies will have collected at least a few valuable prizes. That will be them in the offseason, showing them off.
They will celebrate Rhys Hoskins, who has broken home run records belonging to, among others, Ted Williams. They will tout the exit velocity of Nick Williams’ line drives. They’ll beam over the revival of Aaron Nola. And if they don’t have a Freddy Galvis Gold Glove to drag onto their winter caravan, something is violently wrong.
And when all of that is properly applauded, and when the analysis is brought down a decibel or two, they will have one more reason to have declared an otherwise miserable season fulfilling.
That Adam Morgan … who’d have thought?
Who would have expected that the sputtering left-handed starter, at age 27, would finish the season as one of their most reliable pieces?
Who foresaw the third-year major-league pitcher, who didn’t make it through two appearances without being shooed to the minor leagues, quietly would be reinvented as one of the most reliable relief pitchers in the game over the last couple of months?
“I don’t know if I envisioned it going this way, but I envisioned it going better than it did to start the year,” Morgan was saying Saturday, before a game against the Oakland A’s. “I knew if I just kept going and kept working and kept learning, things would get better.
“But I never envisioned it to be like this.”
As he arrived at Citizens Bank Park Saturday, Morgan had a 0.86 ERA over his last 15 appearances. Since August 1, that ERA trailed only Stephen Strasburg among all major-league pitchers. All of which has left him as a likely discovery in the Phils’ lateseason search. “We’re looking,” Pete Mackanin has said, “for 25 good men.”
Morgan’s resurgence has been a result of good health, opportunity, necessity and determination. A 2011 third-round draft choice, Morgan had early-career shoulder surgery, costing him velocity. And near the end of last season, he was hit on the forearm by a line drive, eventually causing him to end the season in the bullpen.
By then, the Phillies were weary of waiting for him to thrive as a starter, and would try him as a reliever to start this season. But he permitted 11 runs in two brief appearances, and by then, it seemed over.
Yet the Phillies were not so deep in talent that anyone would be denied multiple opportunities. And since they were particularly low on lefthanded pitchers, they would try Morgan again.
Then, it came together. All of it. The velocity he’d lost early in his career was back. The changeup that he perfected to compensate never left.
There he was, healthy, left-handed, and reborn. How? “I don’t know,” Morgan said. “I think it just boils down to just sticking to your strengths. That was a turning point to me. Instead of thinking about the hitters’ weaknesses, you just stick to your strengths and attack them with your strengths. It doesn’t matter if they are good change-up hitters. They haven’t seen my changeup. And I am not going to change until they show me otherwise.”
The Phillies are about to go through an entire season without starting a left-handed pitcher. The last time they did that was 1918. That’s one reason they are still considering the possibility of Morgan being resurrected next season as a starter. For all their recent advances, the Phillies remain a franchise still adjusting its GPS. And for all his struggles, Morgan has had enough solid starts since 2015 to make a front office reluctant to formally edit his job description.
“Well, I don’t know what Matt (Klentak’s) plans are,” Mackanin said. “But I like him in this role. I like him where he’s at. A guy like that is so versatile. He can get righties and lefties out. He can spot. He can be a situational guy. He can give you length. And he’s got increased velocity.
“I think there might be some discussion about making him a starter again, but I just feel that he’s got increased velocity because he is not starting. We’ll see. But I like him right where he is at.”
The Phillies lack for plenty. They do not lack for interesting, if unproven, young arms. Morgan has been through that casting call, and to no satisfaction. But as the franchise attempts to grow from one that Sunday will use its 31st pitcher of the season (Andres Blanco included) in Henderson Alvarez to one with a reasonably set roster, there has to be room for a reliable left-handed reliever. In that, Morgan has found something in a season where so much else was lost: A role.
“Yeah, I hope,” he said. “I really feel like I am trying to find my niche in the game. I am thankful to the Phillies for the opportunity to keep finding that niche, so I guess I am just really trying to find it. If this is it, this is it.”
And if it is, Morgan, too, will be something the Phillies can show off for a while.