Alan Truex: Morton improvises after curve betrays him
Updated Thursday, October 3, 2019
This is an unusual baseball season in which even the most dominant teams have glaring flaws. Dodgers with a shaky closer, Astros and Yankees with a frightful No. 4 starter.
So you can’t help thinking the door is open for a small-market franchise, the Tampa Bay Rays, to win the next World Series.
They made a persuasive statement with their 5-1 dispatching of the Oakland A’s in Wednesday night’s Wild Card. Charlie Morton’s pitching was remarkable, not because he was dominant but because he was versatile, creative, tenacious.
He labored through a 32-pitch, bases-jammed first inning, escaped without damage. His curve, rated by FanGraphs as MLB’s No. 1, was loose — usually far off the plate. He had to go fastball, and at 35 he’s a couple mph off vintage.
But somehow he summoned the heater that made him the most impacting pitcher of the 2017 postseason. Against the playoff-cursed A’s he consistently clocked 97 and sometimes 98. The batters – all except for the very best, the great Matt Chapman — were helpless.
As MLB Network’s Harold Reynolds put it, “His stuff was still electric. It wasn’t the 12-to-6 breaking ball we’ve seen, but he had 96 (mph) with movement.
“We’re so focused on power that we forget what 96 on a sinker looks like. And he had a 98 four-seamer. He did stuff on the fly, invented junk during the game.”
Indeed, while sculpting a 16-6, 3.05 ERA season, Morton determined that his A-game was a mix of 45% curves, 40% fastballs. The other 15% consisted of carefully spotted sinkers and split-finger changeups.
But when he was no longer Uncle Charlie, he quickly changed his arsenal: sinkers and splitters put the batters off balance. The A’s, except for a Chapman solo homer, couldn’t touch him in innings 2-5. So the Rays, with the deepest bullpen this side of Manhattan, are in Houston for the next round.
I recently spoke to a scout for the Rays who was studying teams that his might face in the postseason. “One team we’re not afraid of,” he said, “is Houston. We think we know how to pitch to them.”
It was a bold assertion given that the Astros wear rings from the 2017 World Series (Morton winning Game 7). And they reached the American League Championship Series last year, losing to Boston, the eventual world champ.
But the Rays have beaten Houston 11 out of the last 17 times they’ve met and hold the edge this season at 4-3.
The Astros’ lineup is an enviable combination of booming power and steady contact. Since they like to swing at the first pitch, the Rays make it a tough one to hit.
And as Tom Verducci of MLB Network observed: “No matter who’s at the plate, lefty or righty, no matter what kind of swing plane they have, the Rays have somebody in the bullpen to match up with them.”
Indeed, manager Kevin Cash can choose from five relievers with ERAs under 4.00, including setup man Nick Anderson (2.11) and closer Emilio Pagan (2.31), who finished off the A’s on Wednesday night.
Tampa this season averaged a middling 3.7 runs per game. But the pitching staff, with a 3.65 ERA, was inferior in the AL only to Houston’s.
The Rays’ numbers would have been much better if not for the absences of last year’s Cy Young Award winner, Blake Snell, and this year’s ERA leader for the first half, Tyler Glasnow.
The 6-8, Glasnow, throwing 99-100, was 6-1 with a 1.86 ERA when he was re-routed from the All-Star Game to the injured list with a strained forearm.
He worked his way back in September. He threw 4 1/3 scoreless, hitless innings Friday in Toronto and struck out 5.
Glasnow will be looking to stretch to 6 innings in Houston for Friday night’s Game 1 of an AL Division Series.
Alas, Snell’s recovery is less sure after arthroscopic surgery in July for what sounds ghastly: “loose bodies” in his elbow.
He’s made three September starts but hasn’t reached the third inning. His velocity is back (11 strikeouts in 6 innings). But control, always an issue with this 26-year-old lefty, lags: 5 walks in his 6 innings since his reactivation.
Morton is due to pitch Game 3 in Florida (“The Orange Juice Playoff,” tweets Gerrit Cole) and could have the Astros second-guessing themselves for ushering him into free agency last November.
It was an off-season shocker when the Rays carved out $15 million for Morton. Tampa has the lowest player payroll in the majors, at $63 million – a quarter of what the Boston Red Sox spend for their roster.
It’s unfortunate Morton probably won’t face Justin Verlander in the ALDS. That would be the ultimate in big-game duels.
I might give the edge to Morton, because in the year of the bomb he keeps it in the yard: 15 homers in 195 innings, compared to the presumptive Cy Young honoree serving 36 in 223.
Wednesday’s Wild Card game was called the Moneyball Playoff. Oakland’s Billy Beane created the model for small-market, low-cost ball that Tampa executes so well. Build a bullpen — relievers cheaper than starters — and accumulate moderately priced, patient hitters who wear down the opposing starter.
The Rays are somewhat desperately hanging on, attracting 15,000 people per game to Tropicana Field, which is a hospitable enough ballpark doomed by a water-logged location, location, location.
The Rays are tied to a stadium lease through 2027. Perhaps there’s time for the Tampa Bay area to discover a ballclub that did compete in the 2008 World Series.
My friend with the Rays lamented: “The last time we were in the playoffs, I stepped into a sports bar near Tropicana Field and there were all these televisions going. But none had our playoff game on it. I don’t know what can be done.”
