Morton’s outcome rings loud
offenses were just going punch for punch. It was unreal to watch because it’s hard to score runs in this game. It’s hard to get consecutive hits, and it’s hard to hit home runs. It’s apparently easier this year.”
This year was Morton’s first in Houston after the Astros signed him to a twoyear, $14 million contract. Injuries disrupted his time with the Pirates and Philadelphia Phillies; he missed significant chunks of time because of surgeries on his elbow, both hips and his hamstring. This season he had a 3.62 ERA and struck out 10 batters per nine for an Astros team that won 101 games and won the American League West Division by 21 games.
“Most of our days in the late summer and early fall, we showed up at the field with the expectation that we were going to win and with the knowledge that the teams that were closest behind us were 14, 15 games behind,” Morton said. “I didn’t feel like we played a ton of high-pressure games. … The reason for that was the team was so good.”
Prior to this season, Morton had made one postseason appearance — for the Pirates in Game 4 of the 2013 National League Division Series against the St. Louis Cardinals.
This postseason, after a solid start in Game 5 of the ALDS against the Boston Red Sox, Morton found some bad luck in Game 3 of the ALCS against the New York Yankees. He allowed seven runs in 3⅔ innings. Three runs in the second scored on an infield hit, a bloop and a no-way-that-gotout homer off the end of Todd Frazier’s bat.
“Right after the game I spoke with [Astros manager] A.J. [Hinch], I spoke with our pitching coach [Brent Strom], and they’re just like, ‘Hey, I know you probably feel awful about this, but what we saw was different than what you’re probably feeling right now,’” Morton said.
Morton got the ball again in Game 7. He pitched five scoreless innings. He allowedone run in 6⅓innings in Game 4 of the World Series. “As I kept pitching more games in the postseason, I started to feel more comfortable about it,” he said.
He was a spectator for the ridiculous Game 5, which the Astros won, 13-12, in 10 innings — “Guys were going up to the clubhouse just to get a breather,” he said. “Guys that weren’t even playing.”
When Morton realized he had in fact recorded the final out in Game 7, he turned to find catcher Brian McCann. He had thrown to McCann in the Area Code prospects games in 2001, then again when the Atlanta Braves drafted them both. McCann caught Morton’s major league debut in 2008.
“We were able to get the last out of the World Series together,” Morton said. “It was pretty sweet.”
Morton heard from former Pirates teammates and coaches after the Series ended. The way his Pirates tenure ended — in a trade with the Philadelphia Phillies for a minor league pitcher — still bugs him, not because they traded him but because of his performance.
“When I left Pittsburgh, it was after a bad year, probably my worst year since 2010,” said Morton, who had a 4.81 ERA in 129 innings that season. “That was hard for me, because Pittsburgh meant a lot to me. I would have liked to have pitched better in 2015 and done more for the team and contribute, because the team meant a lot to me, the organization and the city meant a lot to me. To leave that way was hard. I go to Philly and I make four starts and tear my hamstring, have to have surgery again, just looking for some ups, you know? Something good to happen.
“So when the Astros called in November of last year, it was a surreal feeling. Obviously for that to lead where it did, I couldn’t have asked for, for me, my family and my friends, a better outcome.”