The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Morton ready when Astros improvised
LOS ANGELES — The closer he got to his dreams, the more they seemed to slip from Charlie Morton. He defied the odds simply by making the majors, something nobody else from Joel Barlow High School in Redding had ever done. But for years his career sputtered, and mostly, Morton said, he felt like he was letting people down.
His pitching coach with the Houston Astros, Brent Strom, said Morton had a pessimistic streak and needed to build his confidence. He may as well have been Charlie Brown, since he didn’t seem too happy being Charlie Morton — or, maybe, he was simply a realist in a game built on failure.
“For some people, it’s like you’re down in the cul-de-sac with the basketball hoop, you’re in the countdown, and you’re dreaming of winning the NBA championship,” Morton said. “Or you’re in the backyard and you pretend you’re Ted Williams. I’m sure I did that as a kid.
“But then reality sets in when you become a professional. In a way, I think you start to lose that part of your childhood dreams of being part of a great moment. Honestly, I really just wanted to contribute — to help, you know? I wanted to finish the last few years of my career and be proud of it and feel like I did a good job.”
Morton, who turns 34 this month, spoke in a quiet corner of the Houston Astros’ raucous clubhouse at Dodger Stadium late Wednesday night after Game 7 of the World Series. He had done such a good job that Jeff Idelson, the president of the Baseball Hall of Fame, had just taken his cap as a donation.
Morton worked the last four innings of the Astros’ 5-1 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers, clinching the first championship in the 56 seasons of the franchise. A year after Mike Montgomery earned his first career save to seal a title for the Chicago Cubs, Morton closed out this Game 7 with a victory in his first relief appearance in nine years.
His last pitch was a 96 mph fastball to Corey Seager, who grounded to second baseman Jose Altuve for the final out. Catcher Brian McCann, who caught Morton’s debut for the Atlanta Braves in 2008, jumped into his arms to celebrate.
“He’s always had the stuff, and he learned how to home it in and pitch in the zone,” McCann said later. “He learned how to throw strikes, he learned how to elevate — he learned how to pitch.
When we met at 18 years old, he always threw 95, 96; he always had the curveball. He just refined everything, his mechanics, he could repeat them. What an incredible performance.”
For the Astros and their manager, A.J. Hinch, it was a final bit of improvisation in a breathless postseason in which their closer, Ken Giles, was 0-2 with two saves, one blown save and an 11.74 earned run average. Giles made seven appearances, just one of them scoreless and knew he was slumping at the worst time.
“I’m way better than the way I’m pitching right now,” Giles said after Game 2 at Dodger Stadium, when he blew a lead in the 10th inning of an eventual 7-6 victory. “I’m not pitching to my expectations and I’m beating myself up about it.”
The cracks had started showing in the American League Championship Series, at Yankee Stadium, when Giles — who had 34 saves in 38 chances in the regular season — lost a two-run lead in Game 4. He never pitched after the fourth game of the World Series, when the Dodgers battered him for three runs in the ninth inning to break open a tie game.
By then, Hinch had already shown a willingness to find other pitchers for crucial spots, eschewing the crutch that managers often depend on. Stubbornly hoping for the summer version of a reliever now fading in the fall had contributed to other teams’ World Series downfalls — notably the Boston Red Sox in 1986 and the Philadelphia Phillies in 1993.
Hinch refused to bury the Astros in that same graveyard. At three critical points in this postseason, he liked what he saw from a pitcher already in the game and let him finish it.
“You’ve got to go with the hot hand, and it worked,” said the Astros’ owner, Jim Crane, an old college pitcher. “And it worked more than once.”
In Game 7 of the ALCS, Hinch used starter Lance McCullers Jr. to relieve Morton for the final four innings. That decision clinched the pennant for Houston.
In Game 3 of the World Series, starter Brad Peacock relieved McCullers with one out in the sixth, Hinch stuck with him the rest of the way, too.
And when McCullers could not survive the third inning of his start on Wednesday night, Hinch used three relievers to get the game to Morton for the bottom of the sixth. Two former Cy Young Award winners, Dallas Keuchel and Justin Verlander, got loose for the Astros in the bullpen. But Morton was stifling the Dodgers, and Hinch did not stop him.
The Astros did not expect Giles to falter in October, but they protected themselves by engineering their staff to be fresh through the postseason. Not a single pitcher on the team worked 162 innings — the minimum to be considered for the ERA title — as an Astro this season. Mike Fiers led the team in innings, with 1531⁄ 3, and he was left off the postseason roster.
Of course, the Astros did trade for the prototypical leading man: Verlander, who worked 206 innings between playing for Detroit and Houston and fired a complete game in the ALCS. But McCullers, Peacock and Morton each made at least 22 starts in the regular season while pitching between 115 and 150 innings — enough of a workload to be available for multiple innings in October, but not so much to be exhausted by the World Series.
In the end, there was Morton, sturdy and strong, defying his history as a pitcher perhaps best known for injuries. He had left hip surgery in 2010, Tommy John surgery in 2012 and right hip surgery in 2014. In 10 seasons, he has never reached 30 starts or 175 innings.
The Astros saw enough in Morton’s statistical profile to sign him to a twoyear, $14 million contract last November.
Morton was 14-7 with a 3.62 ERA in the regular season, with a career-best 10 strikeouts per nine innings. Then he became the first pitcher in baseball history to win two Game 7’s in the same postseason.
“I’m still not a 200-inning guy,” Morton said. “But I’m part of something special.”