Morrow took the mound in Tuesday night's TV game.  Dr. D had no objection to this.

Casey Blake, impressively, hit an HR to center field on a 96-mph aspirin tablet.  That's major leaguers for you, especially when they're nothing but dead red .... Morrow started out 94-95 and quickly loosened up.  His fourth hitter, he threw four consecutive screamers 97-97-96-97.   That was from the stretch.  After not having pitched.

Quick reminder, for the M's fan in all of us, catcher Dave Valle's observation re: Morrow -- there are fastballs and there are fastballs.  Some of them, sez Dave, get to about the last five feet and then just seem to explode.  Morrow's easy 94-97 gas is effectively even harder than that.  As Yogi sez, you could look it up (in the K rates).

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The muscle strain in the forearm isn't anything that makes me (anyway) feel bad.  Connective tissue -- ligaments, the shoulder, tendons -- that's one thing.  But in sports, you do strain muscles.  You rest them and they heal.  You pull stuff, you rub liniment on it, you wait until it's better.  Then you go out and pull something else.  :- )

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Morrow, on the postgame interview, volunteered that his breaking stuff wasn't ready, but would be.  Geoff Baker would have asked him how he avoids forearm strains in the future; Rick Rizzs asked him what the timetable is the next few weeks, which wasn't bad either.  Morrow said, he hadn't even thought about it:  if he feels good tomorrow, which he expects to, they go from there.

:: blinks ::

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If you haven't seen it, here's a 2008 interview that captures James' good-natured, baseball-obsessed attitude.

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We've been wallowing in Bill James' work since the mid-1980's, listen to The Voice with greater raptness than the average bum, and have had a chance to pick his brain on this and that.  So will presume to offer our services as (if nothing else) Seattle's official interpreter of The Founding Father.  And as you've seen around the 'net, he has the juice on Morrow:

"The Mariners in 2006 drafted Brandon Morrow with the #5 pick in the draft, rather than local favorite Tim Lincecum, who went to San Francisco with the tenth pick. This is something that people talk about, but--just my opinion--in the long run, I don't think anybody is going to regret drafting Brandon Morrow."

When Bill put out his Player Handbooks in the late 80's and early 90's, he used to post draft alerts for Ultra roto owners.  We distinctly remember one time, about 1989, or something, when he typed in all caps something like, "if you don't read anything else in this book:  GET ROBERTO ALOMAR."

I was always amazed.  Each year he'd have two or three super-recommendations, and they always turned out to be Roberto Alomar, Carlos Delgado, Frank Thomas, Chipper Jones (those are three actual examples).  Then he'd say about a hyped Todd Van Poppel, "No prospect."

Bill's quote, above, reads to me like the old GET BRANDON MORROW alerts, indicating that Bill considers him one of the three or four commodities in baseball about to explode into big stardom.

I think he's tremendous. Morrow had a 3.34 ERA last year, but there are several signals that he may be a better pitcher even than that. Batters hit .174 against him, which is Randy Johnson territory.

The naive among us :- ) might imagine that Bill doesn't get BABIP.  Hey, he *works* with Voros McCracken; almost the same day that McCracken first published BABIP theory, James wrote an essay on it stating two things:

1.  The theory is mostly right.

2.  Some pitchers can deviate from it within a limited range.

We exchanged e-mails with him on it, and he said something like "Well, Nolan Ryan (IIRC) allowed 100 fewer hits over his career than predicted by BABIP, but the theory is useful."   In other words, right off the bat James' keen judgment told him that BABIP would be fundamentally sound, though sometimes warped by complicating factors.

The .174 AVG remark is an observation that Morrow is just super hard to hit, like the Big Unit was, has extra-extra stuff, like the Big Unit had.  That stems from a fastball that clocks 95-97 and that actually looks faster than that.

He made a mid-season conversion from relief to starting, which probably didn't help his numbers any, and he gave up 10 home runs with just 47 fly outs. A ratio like that is probably a fluke, since the pitcher doesn't really control the percentage of flyballs against him that become home runs. He may not be a starting pitcher. In five starts in September he walked 19 men, which is too many; even Randy couldn't succeed as a starter issuing that many free passes. He may have to go back to the bullpen. And I'm not saying he is Tim Lincecum, but...I think he's a guy who has Cy Young ability."

Finishing with the Cy Young prediction, James isn't recommending that Morrow go back to the 'pen, nor predicting that he will have to.  He's hedging his bets, saying, "if Morrow turns out not to contend for a Cy Young or three, it will be because he becomes Jon Papelbon."

James isn't infallible.  But it's nice to see him pushing all in on Brandon Morrow for 2009.

Cheers,

Dr D