North Of The Border, Brandon Morrow On Track To Develop Into Brandon Morrow

And I wasn’t using plots during the game. This is circumstantial and experiential. The plot is just there to illustrate a point, not as definitive evidence.

Bluebird Banter is inherently bias since they’re rooting for the Jays, but you can go check the gamethreads. The sentiment is that Morrow was getting squeezed and was nibbling really well. If the plots are +/-2", there are a significant amount of pitches around the edge of the zone. Even if we can’t count missed calls, we can see a trend in called strike zones. Felix was gettig the low right corner in this game, despite all available evidence to the contrary?

What’s the point in “ROBOTS!” if the plots aren’t that accurate? The plots are sourced from PitchFX data. I’m just talking about a trend—those borderline balls are all in the bottom part of the zone, forget individual pitches.

Pitcher should adjust to strike zones, no question. With that said, I don’t think it’s so much a “benefit of the doubt” for Morrow.

Long-term, if he can continue generating swinging strikes and groundballs (and his LD% and HR/FB rate regress as Edgar for Pres suggests they should blow), then nibbling on the zone can be a useful tool. I was looking at the start from a purely developmental perspective. I think it was a good step, even if the results—including his “adjustment” factor*—were bad.

My only argument here is that Morrow has been far better this season than he ever was an M’s starter—individual games against Oakland and New York excepted, of course. As a starter here, he had an FIP (and I’m talking from memory, having done the calculations before) of something like 5.25. In seven starts in Baltimore, he’s in the low 4’s over seven starts and five of those starts generated an FIP under 4. That means, basically, two horrendous starts that offset everything else.

Given that, I think Morrow is underrated by the Seattle fanbase because of the amazing amount of frustration he gave us over three partial seasons. (And I do not deny that it was amazingly frustrating.) Then again, maybe the Blue Jays organization and coaching has made a difference that ours could not? Maybe a change of scenery has helped? Or maybe he’s the same pitcher and it’s all being read into too much. I don’t know. I just know so far this year, Morrow hasn’t been as disappointing as Jeff’s original post implied.**

*Here’s an interesting proposition: Beyond the Box Score used PitchFX data to generate umpire-specific strike zones. Might we be able to generate some sort of measurement to how well a pitcher adjusts his approach to a strike zone? My instinct tells me there’d be too much noise in the data and staggeringly small sample sizes, but since we’re saying pitchers should adjust, would it be fair to see if they do?

**To me. Maybe Jeff didn’t mean it this way.