MORTON, BUCS WIN
After surgery and mechanical failures, Morton is back in fine form
Two months ago, Charlie Morton felt out of whack playing catch, let alone trying to get hitters out off a mound. An injury caused him to pitch half of 2014 with altered mechanics, long enough that they became habit.
After Morton’s season debut Monday night, that had changed.
“That was the best I’ve felt in a while,” Morton said after pitching seven strong innings as the Pirates beat the Miami Marlins, 4-2, at PNC Park. The Pirates won their fourth game in a row and evened their record at 22-22.
“We’re playing the kind of baseball we’re capable of,” manager Clint Hurdle said. “We have to play hungry. This isn’t the ’13 team, this isn’t the ’14 team. This is the ’15 team that, for me, hadn’t established any identity through 40 games. We needed to take upon ourselves to do something collectively.”
Through 40 games, the Pirates had lost six out of seven and were four games worse than .500. Then, they swept the New York Mets this past
weekend, scoring 21 runs in three games and stringing together three exceptional performances from their starting pitchers.
“I like the way this team has responded,” Hurdle said. “I like this team a lot. I like their makeup, I like their guts. We got to play better baseball.”
Better baseball continued with Morton’s outing. He needed only 87 pitches for seven innings of tworun ball, did not walk a batter and induced 16 groundball outs compared to zero fly-ball outs. He left some fastballs up in the zone, but his sinker had good movement.
Francisco Cervelli and Pedro Alvarez each homered. Tony Watson survived a Giancarlo Stanton drive to the warning track with a runner on in the eighth and Mark Melancon saved his 11th game.
Pain in Morton’s his groin, butt and hip bothered him for the second half of 2014, and eventually he had surgery to repair a torn labrum in his right hip — three years after needing the same surgery on the left side. Throughout spring training, he was on track to start the season on time, but, after he allowed six runs, five earned, with four hits, five walks and two hit batters in 1⅔ innings April 4 in his final spring start, the Pirates put him on the disabled list.
Morton worked for the past two months on eradicating the bad habits he adopted when pitching through pain last season. That meant keeping his weight over his back leg, moving directly toward the plate rather than toward the third-base line and preventing his left arm from flailing to his left, a motion he called “swimming.”
“A lot better,” Morton said of his mechanics. “Getting a little bit more distance in the back, my stroke’s a little bit better, more fluid. My timing’s better. My direction’s a bit better. Everything’s just better overall.”
Said Hurdle, “The numbers tell you how his mechanics worked, for me.”
Dee Gordon manufactured a run in the first, and Stanton homered in the third, but Morton ensured those were the Marlins’ only two runs.
Neil Walker singled with one out in the second. Alvarez hit a grounder into the shift that slipped between Gordon and Martin Prado, putting runners on the corners. Cervelli drove a fastball over the Clemente Wall for his first home run as a Pirates player to put them ahead, 3-1.
In the sixth, Alvarez lined a ball into the first row of seats in left-center field for his ninth home run.
“It means I’m hitting the ball where it’s pitched and I’m seeing the ball well,” Alvarez said.
For Morton, the results Monday did not surprise him, but were welcome, even beyond the obvious impact on the game’s outcome.
“I think it was just a relief,” he said. “I knew that my stuff was pretty good. ... But to go do it is different.”