Morrow adds strength to Jays’ rotation
DUNEDIN, Fla. — Brandon Morrow has always found it difficult to gain weight. Before the Seattle Mariners made him a first-round draft pick in 2006, he carried only 185 pounds on his six-footthree frame. But he could throw a baseball 100 miles an hour and that mattered most back then.
Morrow’s evolution since then has featured some fortunate, fluky and frustrating turns, but through it all, his playing weight has hovered around 200 pounds. He was tall and he was thin.
When he stepped on the scales Monday, the Toronto Blue Jays pitcher weighed 219 pounds. That’s 25 more than he weighed during the 2012-13 off-season and 16 pounds over his Opening Day weight last year.
Everyone in the Jays clubhouse has noticed and everyone is hoping bigger means better.
“He’s put on a lot of weight — muscle,” manager John Gibbons said after Morrow threw a bullpen session Monday morning. “He looks strong. He looks like he’s supposed to look. Last year he didn’t look like that. He looks like a good, strong, starting, durable pitcher.”
Toronto management would happily apply those same four adjectives to Morrow come September. During the past two seasons, a couple of peculiar injuries — an oblique strain and a compressed nerve in his forearm — sidelined the righthander for long stretches. At every turn this winter, club officials have said a healthy, productive Morrow is a key — perhaps as important as any — to the Jays’ success in 2014.
Morrow is not about to suggest his added weight will translate into a better performance or greater durability. But he clearly is happy with the new look and feel, and especially with the way his arm has rebounded after that nerve problem cost him the final four months of last season.
“I feel great,” he said. “I feel strong. I’ve never found fatigue in my legs to be a problem, even in the later innings, but I definitely feel stronger this spring.”
He did not set out to gain weight in the off-season. But after noticing that he’d added a couple pounds a few months ago, he decided to make a push. Protein shakes and scrambled eggs helped.
“I started adding more weight when I lifted and having more protein shakes, and having a snack like scrambled eggs after my workouts,” he said.
During the first official spring workout for Jays pitchers and catchers on Monday, Morrow threw 43 pitches in the bullpen. That’s a few more pitches than normal for a first session, but as he worked his arm back into shape during the winter, he threw five times off a mound. So he may be slightly ahead of the other pitchers in that regard.
As Gibbons observed, nobody got any hits off his pitchers Monday, so everybody looked good. Praise comes easily from coaches at this time of year and it flowed from pitching coach Pete Walker when someone asked about Morrow.
“I thought he had good pop on the ball, located the ball well and overall felt really good about his outing,” Walker said. Oh, yes, and “he looks great physically,” the coach observed.
The Jays have always felt Morrow has ace potential. He certainly showed it in 2012 when, despite losing more than two months to injury, he posted a 2.96 ERA and 1.115 WHIP in 21 starts. He also logged a career-high groundball rate of 41 per cent.
If one looked to quibble with that performance, one might suggest greater efficiency. His average outing fell a tad short of six innings, but he averaged 98 pitches per start.
Last year he developed arm problems early and tried to keep going. “I wanted to pitch,” he says simply, while acknowledging he might have benefited from a couple weeks off. Because the entire rotation “pitched like garbage” in April, he felt compelled to keep trying, the better to trigger a turnaround. Instead, he was done after 10 starts.
The Jays are counting on R.A. Dickey, 39, and Mark Buehrle, who turns 35 in March, to pitch 200 innings again. If Morrow, 29, can do the same, the rotation should feature a strong nucleus, Walker says.
His marching orders for Morrow? “We want him to be a workhorse,” he says.
With his added muscle, Morrow certainly looks the part. The next challenge is to keep the workhorse healthy.