Is something I just don't get. Kinda like I didn't get the frustration with Meche.
I caught, like, 5 minutes of the 710 radio postgame and whoever was doing the show said that all he saw in Morrow was a decent MLB reliever. Unbelievable.
Morrow's exactly as you describe him doc... a young pitcher, witha golden arm, and some mechanical tweaks to figure out.
Felix was one of the best prospects in the history of pitchers. How many years did it take him to really put it all together? And of course your example of Randy is a good one.
The media and bulk of fandom think Morrow's been jerked around, RP to SP to AAA to MLB & back again, and for some reason it causes hand-wringing... they need to relax on this stuff. There are lots of paths for development. Morrow was great as a reliever, and has had pretty good success as a starter, despite his limited experience and short development path.
Let the guy be your #3-#4SP for a coupla three years and watch him work his way in to TOR performance. It'll happen.
=== YippEEEE! Dept. ===
Bill James once described History's Perfect Offense as four great hitters, two left and two right, a leadoff man, two homer guys and a doubles guy.
Tampa had leveled a pretty reasonable facsimile thereof at Brandon Morrow:
LH Carl Crawford -- .307 with 59 stolen bases, 111 OPS+
RH Jason Bartlett -- 320/390/500 -- 25 SB's, 34 doubles & triples, 14 homers
LH Ben Zobrist -- 290/400/525 -- 24 homers, 138 OPS+
RH Evan Longoria -- 280/360/530 -- 31 homers, 108 RBI already, 44 doubles
Okay, those guys aren't great, but they're definitely a leadoff guy, two homers guys and a gap-power #3 guy.
.................
After five, Morrow had 0-fer'd them, except Zobrist had a broken-bat one-hopper through the hole and Longoria had a short single. Tampa's other hit was a clean double by Willy Aybar.
After five, Morrow had a 64-pitch three-hit shutout ... on his B game. He'd thrown 41 of 64 pitches for strikes and was cruising with a 4-0 lead.
Going into the 6th, Morrow had just gotten UGly on the last four hitters:
Upton -- 4-pitch humiliation strikeout, that we'll check in a second
LH Navarro -- quick 1-2 count and then routine fly out to Ichiro
LH Brignac -- blown up with three pitches, which we'll check in a second
Bartlett -- Ahead 2-0 on missed call by ump, flies out anyway
In the 4th and 5th, Morrow was having fun, mixing his offspeed stuff, then firing missiles past the Rays hitters...
.
=== YIPpee Dept.===
Then, in the sixth, Morrow comes out and .... 4-pitch walk. Adair stomps out to the mound. Don't you know you have a four-run lead, kid?
Hey, I'm willing to throw strikes, Morrow says, presumably. Any help here?
Try some offspeed stuff, Adair says, presumably. We can't fool around here.
I'm not fooling around, Morrow says, presumably. I would kind of prefer not to humiliate myself on TV.
Well, bear down, Adair says, presumably. And stomps off.
.............
Morrow immediately improves: he walks Longoria on 5 pitches rather than 4.
Wakamatsu, in a rare display of pique, jumps out of the dugout and yanks Morrow.
..............
Q. Is Morrow losing the radar so suddenly because he's getting the yips? Do we need to fear a Steve Blass or Kip Wells situation?
A. No, because when he loses the radar he consistently starts leaving the ball high. Over the strike zone. High and away.
If it were nerves, he'd be throwing all over the place, throwing to the backstop, spiking pitches in the grass, etc. Morrow doesn't get crazy. He just gets to where every pitch is high and away (to a LH hitter) and he can't fix it.
...............
The high-away thing is due to not stepping with his lead foot in the same place every time, or something similar to that. Rushing the upper body, lead shoulder too high, all are related to trying too hard. "Bearing down" is actually counterproductive for a guy who's stressing.
Morrow is a YOUNG PITCHER. He has not yet mastered his mechanics. He gets a little tired, or he gets stressed, and the foot lands a little short, or whatever.
Consistent mechanics are what you get from 30-year-old pitchers, or from 23-year-old pitchers who are coached very well.
................
Until Randy Johnson was fully 29 years old, he walked 100-140 men per year, and everybody around him yelled at him, all the time, to throw strikes. :- )
Not one of us -- so frustrated with Randy -- said, "Hey, stop leaning back 10 degrees on the backstroke." We just said, "Throw strikes!"
Then somebody, mercifully, showed Randy a photo of himself, leaning back 10 degrees on the backstroke. He leaned forward on the backstroke and took over baseball.
Those eight years of pro coaches who got annoyed at Randy? All eight years of them, failed to notice a very simple problem in his mechanics. If we were being unkind, we'd point out right here that it was the coaches' jobs to notice those problems, not Randy's. But we're not, so we won't.
We'll just wonder, idly, if a pitching coach who doesn't spot mechanical flaws should be annoyed with the pitcher, or with himself. I think that's a fair question, don't you?
.................
Do you think that anybody who has not identified Brandon Morrow's mechanical flaws, has a right to be annoyed with him about frazzing out on his control? :- )
We don't mean to be too tough on Wok and Adair, who we like and respect. We're just saying: everybody who ranked on the Big Unit, back when he was Randy Johnson -- none of us knew what was going on, either.
..................
Brandon's a young guy, and even younger in SP years. He's got mechanics to figure out. That's all.
It's not even his job to find the problems.
Just an opinion,
Dr D
Comments
...it comes with a drop in velocity too. Every time he starts to lose the strike zone, Morrow's velocity drops. From 94-95 consistently to 92, sometimes 90. That happened again in the 6th.
it is the same issue that Doc describes. He trys too hard, and he knows when he starts trying too hard, so he trys hard to "take a little off" which is just a different way of trying too hard :) , does that make sense?
He tries to be perfect, and when he isn't perfect he tries even harder to be perfect, that doesn;t mean he is trys throwing the ball harder, it means he start to try and aim it, instead of just throw the ball with his normal mechanics like he knows how.
It sounds like Morrow needs something that Dr. D has talked about before, the "Emptying of the mind" mental state, where his practice and natural mechanics can just take over. Morrow's death nell is thinking too much.
Was still one of the Mariners' best pitchers. The walks were so frustrating that nobody, NObody noticed that he was going 14-10.
I remember a James player handbook in the early 90's that went, Hey, he does win some games, guys, despite the walks.
Most likely is that he's simply taking a little off, since overthrowing doesn't necessarily take -5 off your fastball.
Problemo is, that can result in 'steering' the ball -- like a golfer DECELERATING the club through the ball -- and far worse mechanics. When you're not accelerating through the release point, you lose the centrifugal 'trueness.'
We only mention it, because that's what Brandon Morrow is in fact doing.... :- )
The only solution is for somebody to find the variability in the plant foot, or whatever the variation is. You'd think with 3-D spline video that work would be a piece of cake these days, wouldn't you?
It should be noted that the details of the situations map perfectly onto the concern about having Morrow as a starting pitcher, where an inability to control his blood sugar leads to inconsistencies in performance. While I understand that the veracity of the spring training account of his health concerns was not a balanced presentation of the situation, it was not a complete fabrication. Maybe Brandon said he was light headed and struggling with his blood sugar level, so he got the hook.