Let's forget for a moment that this was Morrow's fifth Major League start and go back to the checklist I wrote up before his first:

(1) High-90s fastball

Nope. Morrow threw 75 fastballs tonight, and only one of them clocked in higher than 96 (96.3). By comparison, he threw 25 under 93, and registered an overall average of 93.5. Assuming there's nothing wacky going on with the PITCHf/x data, Morrow didn't have the same heat he was flashing all the time against the Yankees. Not even particularly close. This was a lot more along the lines of what I was anticipating before he went and gave my bar of expectations a swift kick in the crotch. This was his bullpen fastball minus a few expected miles for the transition. Predictably, it wasn't as good.

(2) Sustained velocity

Check, sort of. Where Morrow trailed off towards the end of his last start (presumably due to the unprecedented pitch count), today he fought through an early lull and averaged 93.9 on his fastball in the fifth inning. Of course, his average was 92.2 in the third and his final fastball of the night came in at a hair over 90, so he wasn't perfect, but for the most part he did manage to finish with ~as much heat as he had when he started.

(3) 30% offspeed stuff

Check. 34%. Of Morrow's 114 pitches tonight, 15 were sliders, 13 were changeups, and 11 were curveballs. That's still a little Felixy, so it's not ideal, but for a pitcher in Morrow's position who's so frequently trying to battle back from behind in the count, 34% is pretty good. That suggests either a fair bit of confidence on Morrow's part in his offspeed pitches, or a commitment to getting better no matter the immediate consequences. I'll take it.

(4) Changeup to lefties

Check, sort of. Morrow threw 78 pitches to left-handed batters tonight, with 13 of them being changeups. That's not phenomenal, but it's okay, considering he also threw 10 curveballs. The problem is that his changeup just sucked. Suck-diddly-ucked. Of his 13 changeups, ten were balls and none were missed. He threw it, and the intentions were there, but it just wasn't working in the least. This weapon will very obviously require a whole lot of work.

(5) Efficiency

Heavens no. 114 pitches, five innings, 4.4 pitches per batter. Only seven of 26 plate appearances lasted fewer than four pitches, and only six of them started with a strike. Video of this game would be like Red Asphalt for pitching coaches. This was five consecutive innings of the Mediocre Morrow that at times drove us so crazy out of the bullpen.

If you'd have asked me back in March to predict what Morrow would look like as a new starter, this is the sort of game I probably would've described. His fastball velocity didn't carry over all that well, he couldn't throw many strikes, and his offspeed stuff was interesting but incredibly raw. The only real difference - and this is encouraging - is that 20 of Morrow's 26 breaking balls were strikes, five of the swinging variety. The break wasn't always consistent, and the location wasn't always where he wanted it to be, but he was able to find the zone, which is a plus. On a night when he couldn't control his fastball or changeup, I don't even want to imagine how ugly this could've gotten had the breaking balls bailed on him too. Bless their loyalty.

Maybe some of Morrow's struggles tonight were a byproduct of his high pitch count from last time. I don't know. It wouldn't surprise me if that played a part. But overall I think the take-home message is that it's going to take a lot of work before you can pencil Morrow's name into the top of the rotation. Which pretty much all of us already expected, but I know after New York we were hoping for a miracle, and at this point that doesn't look likely. So Morrow's going to have to work his ass off to get there instead. Cross your fingers that he's up to the task. The world always needs more of that kind of talent. And God knows so do we.

After going over a couple games' worth of numbers, I'm starting to get a feel for how to identify Brandon Morrow's pitches by how they look in the PITCHf/x data. His fastball, changeup, curveball, and slider all have distinguishing characteristics that make them pretty easy to tell apart if you know what to look for.

This afternoon, Morrow threw a handful of pitches that were a little more tricky. Pitches that kind of split the middle between what I'd expect of his curveball and what I'd expect of his slider. Pitches that make me wonder if they were mistakes, accidents in grip or arm action due to underuse. After all, he's still getting accustomed to throwing a bunch of breaking balls, right? It would make sense if he's struggling to repeat the same arm action every time.

Here's what those mystery pitches looked like:

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Through six innings, Brandon Morrow had done a reasonable job of shutting down the A's. 94 pitches got him through 22 batters, six of whom struck out and only four of whom reached base. His control and location hadn't been perfect, but they'd been good enough, and all in all the start represented considerable improvement over Morrow's two outings previous. It appeared as if we would be able to close the book on the second-best start of Morrow's brief starting career.

But with a 3-0 lead, with Morrow's 94 pitches being his second-highest total as a pro, Jim Riggleman decided to let his young flamethrower go back out there for the seventh. This after throwing 80 pitches last time and 90 pitches the time before.

The first batter flew out on a first-pitch slider that was 3mph below Morrow's average.

The second batter walked on seven fastballs averaging 92mph, one of which clocked in at a hair under 90.

The third batter doubled on a 92mph fastball in a full count.

The fourth batter walked on five pitches, the last one coming in at the neck.

Riggleman finally came out to relieve Morrow of his duties, his pitch count having risen to a career-high 113. Just eight of his 19 pitches in the seventh inning were strikes, and his 92mph average fastball was two ticks below where he'd stood for the first six innings. Some informative pretty pictures:

Morrow's velocity wasn't the only indicator of his fatigue, either. Check out the average height of his fastballs by inning:

As a pitcher fatigues, it's common to see him struggle to get the same forward extension towards home plate as when he's fresh, resulting in erratic command, frequently up in the zone. Which is pretty much exactly what we saw happen with Morrow this afternoon.

Seems pretty clear to me that Morrow was gassed by the seventh. Completely and utterly gassed. For good measure, four of the five offspeed pitches he threw in the inning missed the zone. He didn't have a single thing working, and yet in a meaningless game he was allowed to throw 19 additional meaningless pitches, the final seven of which established a new career high.

I get that the bullpen has been a disaster. I get that Riggleman wants this losing streak to end. And I get that the team feels a lot of pressure to get Morrow stretched out as quickly as possible. But Morrow's handling today was not in the team's best interests. Even if you excuse Riggleman for sending him back out to start the seventh - which we didn't support at the time - there's no excuse for having left him in after the first walk. When a guy who normally throws 94-96 misses with a fastball at 89, that is the reddest of red flags. Were I a manager, that would've sent me bolting out of the dugout on a beeline to the mound to get my guy out of the game before he could throw another pitch.

Brandon Morrow will probably be fine, and I'm not trying to scare anyone into histrionics over injury concerns. But the way Riggleman used Morrow today was bad, and not because it opened the door for the A's to come back. It was bad because Morrow wasn't ready for this sort of treatment, with the seventh inning offering all kinds of evidence. Just because the Mariners want to get him stretched out quickly doesn't mean he'll be able to proceed at their dictated pace, and I would really prefer to see them be as cautious as possible when it comes to Morrow's usage pattern. Days like today can only do far greater harm than good.

Brandon Morrow pitched pretty well this afternoon. It's a shame that whole episode at the end had to go and ruin it. Please Mariners, if there is any good in your heart, do not allow this to happen again. Let Morrow get stretched out at his own pace, instead of forcing upon him your own. It's not worth it. It's not worth it.

Brandon Morrow threw four curveballs today. This is where they wound up:

Two way high and away, one in the dirt, and one at the belt in the middle of the plate on a 1-2 count. We've seen what this pitch can do to good hitters when it's located even a little bit well, but while the movement is devastating, it is readily apparent to even the most casual of observers that this is still an ongoing project.

The same goes for all of his offspeed stuff, really. Given the way he's looked in his last two starts, one has to wonder if his debut against the Yankees is sort of his version of Felix's 2005, because since then his location has been lousy, particularly that of his junk. Tonight he threw 27 offspeed pitches. 12 were strikes. Two were cut on and missed. That's bad. In fact, that's sort of awful. I know it's cute and all to say that Morrow's fastball is good enough for him to survive on heat alone, but as a starter, that just isn't true. Morrow the starter needs some sort of offspeed consistency, and it looks like that's still something he needs to work on.

Which isn't a surprise, or even particularly distressing. We've suspected for a while that this would be the case. Better the devil you know, and all that. Morrow's never been able to command his pitches very well since arriving in Seattle, so it shouldn't come as a shock that he's having trouble commanding them out of the rotation. It's just that glorious but annoying first start that gives me pause, because he looked so finished, so polished, only to take two substantial steps back. On the one hand, it was obviously a spectacular experience, and we were able to catch a glimpse of Morrow's ceiling, but on the other, that start made me wonder if Morrow is further along than he really is.

In truth, Morrow has a long way to go before he's a finished product. If he's ever a finished product. I don't think he threw a bunch of fastballs today because he wanted to; I think he threw a bunch of fastballs because he didn't feel comfortable enough going offspeed where he wasn't getting a good grip. That's one of the reasons I wanted him to make the bulk of his transition in the minors; in AAA, you can throw whatever you want whenever you want, because the point is to get better. In the Majors, you throw that in which you have a little confidence, because no matter the team's record, it's still a big stage, and teams want to win. I imagine that can have an effect on how a player develops, as it makes it more difficult to work on the flaws. I don't know, now I'm just speculating.

My point is this - where I was previously all irrationally prepared to consider Morrow an immediate asset, I may have allowed his first start to let me get ahead of myself. He isn't that pitcher yet, and as much as I feel like we deserve that sort of break after a season of hardship, I shouldn't expect him to be. As a starter he is but a prospect, and if completely ignoring that moment in the sun is what I have to do to remind myself that he's going to struggle, and to be content with his progress, so be it. Better to be hopeful and look for improvement than to remember the glory and be disappointed.

Brandon, I can't thank you enough for the excitement you provided with that start against the Yankees. But barring something unforeseen, I'm afraid I may have to try and forget about it, at least for a little while. Thinking about it isn't fair to me and it isn't fair to you.

I'm doing this for us. That game on September 5th? It never happened. Here's to your growing pains and lessons on the job. May your next shining moment be less of a glimpse and more an arrival.

Not to put too much pressure on Brandon Morrow or anything but please behold the pitch that will singlehandedly put Seattle back on the baseball map. It is the pitch that will save the franchise and the pitch after which twenty years down the road mothers will be naming their children.

If this were kindergarten, I'd hate to be the guy who has to come after Morrow in show-and-tell.

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That's more like it.

This is more like how I expected Morrow to look in his first go-round as a Major League starter. All the telltale Morrow signs were present, both good and bad - high velocity, swinging strikes, inconsistent offspeed stuff, mediocre control, fly balls. He wound up getting pulled after five innings having thrown 90 pitches, and while it wasn't a spectacular effort or anything, it was a fine performance for a guy in Morrow's situation. You just have to kind of make yourself forget about what he did last Friday. Because as impossibly awesome as that was, it isn't fair to Morrow to let one start raise the bar of short-term expectations.

The quick rundown, since I'm pretty tired:

• Morrow's fastball averaged 94.5mph, down a tick from where it was a week ago. Could be real, might be a PITCHf/x stadium correction issue.
  


• Morrow didn't sustain his fastball velocity as long as he did last time out. Here's today's moving average chart, where each point is the average velocity of the previous five fastballs:
  
  
  If you don't recall, this is what that chart looked like before. Tonight you can see a pretty clear dip there at the end where Morrow was presumably getting gassed. His fastball velocity averaged 95 through the first four frames, but it dropped to 93 in the fifth, after which he got yanked. Wouldn't be the least bit surprised if this was just Morrow's physiological response to being stretched out so long. His arm was worked harder last Friday than it's probably ever been worked before in his life, so it would make sense if he needs a little time to fully recover. I'm not concerned. All we've learned from this is that Brandon Morrow is human.


• Ten more swinging strikes. Even wild, Brandon Morrow is going to miss a lot of bats.


• The reason? Okay, yeah, he's got the fastball, but that curveball he's been throwing is out of this world. The command is not even close to being where Morrow would presumably like it, but the snap on that thing is almost savagely sharp. It's like the pitch doesn't so much travel along an arc as it does a pair of line segments, the first rising slightly and the second dropping down so as to form a pointy bit in the middle whereupon the pitch immediately changes direction. I clearly can't do this justice with words, so you just need to see it. Watch Morrow's curve. Watch the way it breaks. Watch the way hitters respond to its break. It's already a pretty good secondary pitch and Morrow doesn't have any idea where it's going. If he's able to improve his curve command by 20-25%, look out. In terms of pure movement, his is a power curve to end all power curves.


• Ten more changeups out of 37 pitches to lefties. It needs some work, but he threw a particularly nasty one to Garret Anderson when GA was clearly thinking fastball. That's a pitch with potential. Right now Morrow throws four pitches, but given the break on his curve and the potential in his changeup, I wonder if he might be better served dropping the slider and working on improving his other three weapons. Which isn't to say that his slider is bad, because it isn't, but I personally feel it's the worst of the bunch, and that he might be able to improve faster if he limits the number of things he's working on. But I'll let Morrow sort that out. Maybe I just haven't seen enough of his slider to get the right impression. But, oh, that curve...


• I am perfectly satisfied with how Brandon Morrow pitched tonight. It wasn't a one-hitter, but his ability is obvious to even the most untrained of eyes. If you were excited about him before - and I don't know why you wouldn't have been - there's no reason to change your mind now. This looks like a man on the rise.

(Source: 2007-2008 PITCHf/x)

Felix, fastball

96mph
6% swinging strike
21% in play
.352 BA on contact
.571 SLG on contact

Brandon Morrow, fastball

96mph
14% swinging strike
12% in play
.285 BA on contact
.500 SLG on contact

Velocity isn't everything, Felix. Your fastball isn't very good. Establish the change.

-----

By the way, I answered a few questions about Brandon Morrow over at the SBN Berkeley blog, so check those out in case you've nothing better to do. Bear in mind that the questions were answered prior to his start. Rest assured that, were I to do it again, my answers now would extend to Morrow several more offers of a sexual nature.

I don't know where that came from, but I am more glad than I can articulate that I got to see it in person. 

It almost didn't happen too, which as the night wore on weighed more and more heavily on my mind. I wasn't supposed to be in Seattle this weekend. I had decided to attend the game before I knew Morrow was going to start. I ended up with tickets for Saturday instead and had to wait around an inning to exchange them. During that wait, I contemplated perhaps just watching the game in a bar. It seemed too perfect. Too filled with random coincidences to actually come true. But batter after batter came up and batter after batter sat down and after a point there was no rational way to deny it; Brandon Morrow had shown up to pitch. 

Finally getting to my new seats, I discerned that it was going to be tough/impossible to judge the location on pitches from my vantage point, so instead I focused on the hitters themselves and their reactions. Overwhelmingly, what stuck out to me was the pitch selection. Maybe it's because Felix has ruined me in that regard but I was routinely flabbergasted to see Morrow start off hitters late in the game with offspeed pitches and routinely get himself ahead in the count with swinging strikes. The Yankees were sitting fastball (as they should have been) and Morrow was making them pay for it.

Notably, with a 3-2 count on Hideki Matsui with one away in the 8th, Morrow threw a changeup following consecutive fastballs prior. With a no-hitter going, a good left handed hitter at the plate, about 100 pitches already thrown and a 3-2 count, Brandon Morrow threw a changeup. It didn't matter that it missed outside. What matters is that Morrow trusted his changeup enough to throw it in that situation and furthermore, it was a perfect situation for it. That was excellent pitching.

I want to jump back a bit to the sixth inning because that's when it started. I've been to more than a handful of Mariner games over the years and the only reason I haven't been to more is that I might have been spoiled by the memories of SafeCo during the 2000 and 2001 playoffs. Having seen playoff games live, to see what SafeCo could be like as an environment, it angers me to experience what it has become. I don't want to go to games to just sit in my seat and watch. I can do that from home. I want to freak out a little bit, hoot, holler, yell, to really immerse myself in the all together meaninglessness of what is, when you come right down to it, just entertainment. That's part of why real organic game thread emotion was so much fun back in 2007, because it was like being back amongst crowds that cared.

Well, that feeling came back starting around the sixth inning. With a raucous crowd in house because of the numerous Yankee fans, there was already a more amped up atmosphere in place and it took hold in the final at bat of the top of the sixth inning. 

Few things get me more than two strike chants and when I'm not feeling too apathetic while at a game, I love to do them for myself because god knows nobody else in SafeCo is going to join in unless the scoreboard tells them to. And rarely would that ever happen except for J.J. in the 9th and sometimes for Felix if he's pitching deep into a game. Even then, all I've ever seen is just the standard synchronized clapping that comes to a climax far too early and then needs more scoreboard prompting to start anew.

With the count 1-2 on Jeter, the clapping began. The scoreboard was silent and people were starting to clap. Jeter fouled off a fastball and the clapping continued. It got louder even. And lo and behold, some people stood up. They stood up! It was only the sixth inning and people were cheering of their own accord. My joy at such a marvel was through the roof and the place exploded on Jeter's swing and a miss.

And it didn't subside. 0-2 on Rodriguez in the next frame, the majority of the stadium stood up. There was only one out and they stood anyways. Brandon, you gave us almost eight beautiful frames today and a reason to look ahead with a slightly bigger gleam of hope than we had coming in. More importantly to myself though, you took me back seven years to game five of the ALCS, to the last time I remember SafeCo ever acting like that. 

Thank you Brandon. Bravo.

I kind of like what we've already got.

95.7mph average fastball, 29 at 96+

Many moons ago, I went to school with a friend of mine named Brandon. We had the same homeroom. One day in 6th grade history class we were told about a project assignment. We had to pick something specific from one of the three empires we had studied by that point and depict it in a piece of art. It didn't have to be much - we barely had a week to do it - but it had to demonstrate both sufficient effort and knowledge of the subject.

I spent a Saturday drawing and coloring detailed sketches of various Roman gladiators. Brandon prepared a twenty-minute movie about the Coliseum, complete with narration and self-shot footage.

Over time Brandon and I drifted apart as we found our own circles. Years later I heard he went to Berkeley.

95.6mph average, final ten fastballs

I feel kind of stupid now about my checklist. I guess Brandons tend to overachieve.

62 fastballs, 44 offspeed

I was careful not to expect too much. I was so careful, in fact, that not only did I expect Morrow to struggle, but I expected to be okay with it. Realistically, what was the alternative? It didn't make sense to expect Morrow to dominate, or to even pitch effectively at all. Not today, not against the Yankees, not with so little preparation. That would just be us getting our hopes up, and we all know what happens when we get our hopes up. They get dashed. No, I wasn't going to let that happen today. I wasn't going to let myself be disappointed. The one thing I've wanted ever since we took Morrow in the draft was to see him in the rotation, so I told - nay, forced myself to be happy about his simply starting a game. We could deal with standards and expectations later on. Tonight, all I wanted was for Morrow to get his feet wet and last long enough to show off one or two attributes that could help him down the road.

Morrow got his feet wet, all right. He might as well have been kicking water in the hitters' eyes.

60 pitches to lefties, 16 changeups

A handful of pitches into the game, my checklist felt obsolete. Not only did Morrow come out throwing 97, but he also dropped a ridiculous curve on Derek Jeter that looked like something Joakim Soria might throw at 100rpm. The ball missed just low, but the location didn't matter. What mattered was the break. What mattered was how the ball came in around Jeter's belt and dropped like Halley to the shin. That was a true power curve. A Royal Curve, even. I don't know if the title is up for grabs now that Felix has set it free, but if it is, I know who's got first dibs.

That was pitch #4. Pitch #5 was a 97mph fastball at the letters.

Bobby Abreu grounded out to end the first inning. Pitch #10 was a changeup at the knees over the outer half. Brandon Morrow wasn't just looking good; he was looking like a starter. I was happy to find that my pleasure cortex hadn't atrophied from underuse.

27 batters faced, 3.9 pitches per PA, 13.8 pitches per inning

Early on, I was tracking every pitch. I was more interested in this start than any other start I've seen in months. I made note of every fastball, looked at the velocity, and checked to see if he was losing any steam. I was concerned. Having expected Morrow to come in throwing 94-95, I was concerned that he wasn't quite sure how to pace himself, and that he'd wound up feeding off adrenaline and cutting loose in the first. I didn't want to see that happen. I could've understood, but I didn't want Morrow to treat this like one inning of relief and three innings of running on fumes. I wanted him to hold back. I wanted him to hold back and try to make it to the fifth, just to see if he could do it.

Pitch #86 was a 96mph fastball. Alex Rodriguez swung and struck out.

18 swinging strikes

As the season has crawled along, I've noticed that the Mariners' poor play has turned me away from being a fan and towards being more of an objective analyst. I think it's a defense mechanism. The less you live and die by a baseball team, the less it can hurt you. There are no feelings in analysis. Only questions, interesting and not, and answers, right and wrong. For months now, I've paid attention to the Mariners not so much as a fan, but as an impartial observer. Ages ago I weighed the costs and benefits and decided that this was the only rational way to deal with the disappointment.

I clapped when A-Rod struck out. After Jason Giambi flew out to end the seventh, I got up and danced.

9 fastball swinging strikes, 9 offspeed swinging strikes

It's a funny thing that happens when a young pitcher's working on a no-hitter. Unless he's just impossibly efficient, you'll always end up having the same argument with yourself about whether it's wiser to take him out or leave him in. On the one hand, it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the pitcher, and people never forgive taking a guy out under those circumstances, regardless of how intelligent the reasoning. On the other, injuries are such a big concern that you don't want to jeopardize a pitcher's health by overtaxing his arm, even if he's headed for history.

There's no easy answer. All you can really hope for is that the pitcher takes the decision out of your hands, either by allowing a hit or by maintaining his stuff and forging on ahead with his eyes on the prize.

Pitch #99 was a low-inside fastball at 95mph. Hideki Matsui whiffed.

7.2 innings, one hit

It seems appropriate that the one hit Brandon Morrow allowed came on the one pitch that made him look tired. Pitch #106 exceeded Morrow's previous season-high by 24. It was an inside curveball to Wilson Betemit that approached the plate slower than any other pitch Morrow had thrown all night, and it lacked the late snap of the one he'd thrown Jeter in the first. Betemit reached out and yanked it into right-center, where it cleared Ichiro's head and allowed Matsui to come around to score. To Morrow's credit, he wasn't discouraged; when the ball came down, he ran to cover home with nary a flinch. Minutes later, the camera showed him smiling in the dugout. It's not that he'd wanted to allow the hit, but to get all up in arms about one bad pitch would be the pinnacle of short-sightedness. And Berkeley don't raise no idiots.

I was surprised to find that I wasn't all that upset, either. A year ago, JD Drew made me think about homicide. To this day I still think about buying enough tickets to be able to boo him once in every ballpark in the country. But tonight was different. Morrow didn't come in with Felix's expectations. He didn't come in having already been crowned the savior of the organization, and he didn't come in with people looking for him to be consistently excellent. He came in a virtual unknown. And he departed a hero.

It doesn't matter that Morrow allowed a double. Tonight wasn't about making history. Tonight was about catching a glimpse of the future, and if this is what the future looks like, then prepare to get tan. Rest assured that, if we just saw Brandon Morrow, Starting Pitcher, this won't be his only opportunity. A pitcher with stuff that good doesn't just dilly-dally around at the back of a rotation. A pitcher with stuff that good gets posterboard proposals. From men.

Brandon Morrow just gave me quite possibly my favorite Mariner experience since April 2007.

Brandon Morrow allowed a hit.

Biggest Contribution: Brandon Morrow, +31.5%
Biggest Suckfest: Adrian Beltre, -6.2%
Most Important AB: Tuiasosopo double, +9.4%
Most Important Pitch: Jeter single, -7.5%
Total Contribution by Pitcher(s): +42.9%
Total Contribution by Lineup: +7.1%
Total Contribution by Opposition: 0.0%
(What is this chart?)