Sinkerballer Morton passes first test
PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — The first time Charlie Morton returned to the mound after an extended layoff, it was 2013 and he was coming back from Tommy John surgery. His first assignment was to pitch at the Pirates’ spring training facility and even though he was only on backfields in Florida he was still, he said, “jacked up.”
But when he took the mound Friday afternoon for his first start in 314 days, Morton was free of any noticeable adrenaline rush or “amperage,” as he termed it. The cerebral 33-year-old righthander felt in control, he said, and his pitching reflected it.
“Because I’ve been doing this for a while now, I just felt good,” he said. “I don’t know. It was nice.”
Morton’s two scoreless innings against the Mets signified the most encouraging outing by an Astros pitcher in the first week of spring training games. The injury prone veteran, whom the team gambled on with $14 million over the next two seasons, pumped out sinkers with velocity registering in the mid-90s and appeared to do so with minimum effort.
Morton, who saw a velocity spike last March and April before blowing out his hamstring, said afterward he felt like the ball came out of his hand well. Radar gun readings reflected on the First Data Field scoreboard ranged from 95 to 97 mph. The radar gun of one scout in attendance had Morton sitting between 94 and 96 mph.
“I didn’t feel like I was working too hard,” Morton said. “I just felt like I was staying within my delivery pretty well.”
Morton threw 33 pitches in all, working around a two-out Yoenis Cespedes
single in the first inning and a two-out walk to Michael Conforto in the second. He caught Lucas Duda looking at an inside sinker for his only strikeout. He mixed in a half-dozen cutters, a few curveballs and at least one changeup.
“His best stuff ’s pretty good, and he looks really fresh,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said. “He’s gotten through the workouts pretty easily. He came in (to spring training) in good throwing shape. He’s really tackling some of the things that he’s trying to do to get ready. It was a good first outing for him.”
Staying healthy key
Staying healthy will of course be the key for Morton, who hasn’t made 30 starts in any of his nine major league seasons. Most of the injuries he’s incurred throughout his career have not been to his arm save for the Tommy John surgery he underwent in 2012.
Last year with the Phillies, a promising season for Morton ended in only his fourth start when he tore his left hamstring running out a sacrifice bunt. Despite the small sample, the Astros were still intrigued enough by Morton’s “stuff ” that they jumped on him early in free agency. They laced his contract with incentives; he can make $625,000 for every benchmark of 15, 20, 25 and 30 starts made in a season.
The Astros’ emphasis on analytics under general manager Jeff Luhnow also intrigued Morton, who has bought into the use of advanced metrics since his days with the data-driven Pittsburgh Pirates. He has marveled this spring at the high-speed camera with which the team films pitchers throwing their bullpen sessions.
“The amount of information that they have here, (they) have consolidated it into a presentation where you can be like, ‘All right, good, this is great,’” Morton said, “instead of having numbers, numbers, numbers coming from everywhere and you really don’t know what to do with it. I think they want to get everybody on the same page.”
Stop forcing the sinker
When they signed Morton, the Astros did so with the feeling they could maximize his strengths. He has struggled throughout his career against left-handed hitters, who have a combined .859 OPS against him. The team feels he can better counter that by spinning more curveballs and also mixing him in more cutters to get lefties off his sinker.
“And stop forcing my sinker,” Morton said, “because basically that’s what I was doing.”
Morton projects as the Astros’ No. 3 or No. 4 starter depending on the readiness of Collin McHugh, who has yet to throw off a mound in camp. When healthy, Morton provides a different look compared to the rest of the team’s rotation.
But health has long been the knock on him.
“I don’t want to go out the way I went out last year and I don’t want that to happen again,” he said. “I just want to stay on the field and pitch. I want to compete.”