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Brandon Morrow's location against Jason Marquis:
On the left, you see Burke's target and a small yellow circle where the pitch (approximately) wound up. On the right, you see an actual image of where the pitch wound up, just in case you don't believe the yellow circle.
Spare me the talk about how Jason Marquis is an unusually good hitting pitcher. He's a pitcher. He has a lifetime .530 OPS. He was the worst hitter in Colorado's lineup tonight by an enormous margin, and with two outs and the bases loaded, Morrow should've been going right after him. And perhaps that's what he was trying to do - he gave Marquis five consecutive fastballs - but all five fastballs missed their spots, the last two by quite a bit, and the result was that Brandon Morrow drove in a run by walking the pitcher.
Brandon Morrow couldn't throw strikes with his fastball against the opposing pitcher tonight when he needed to. That should be all the proof you need that he's in over his head right now as a starter in the Major Leagues. His stuff moved pretty well over those three innings, but once again Morrow didn't have the slightest idea where the ball was going to go, and that just makes it nigh impossible to succeed. If he can't locate his fastball, how can we expect him to work on his secondary stuff? If he can't work on his secondary stuff, how can we expect him to develop as a starter?
The place for Morrow right now is AAA, where the team can keep a close eye on him and mandate certain things while removing all the pressure. It's easier to implement some tweaks and make a guy throw a 3-0 changeup when the outcomes don't really matter. And right now I've no choice but to trust that the organization is aware of this. Hopefully Bedard's able to return next Friday as scheduled and Morrow can go down to Tacoma and do things the right way, like we were all told he would. Because Seattle isn't the place for Morrow to learn. Not now. Not yet. Quit freaking me out, Wakamatsu.
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Mark Lowe is killing me. How is it that he's able to generate such significantly worse results than David Aardsma despite throwing three times as many kinds of pitches and a harder fastball with more movement? So far in June, Lowe has thrown 78 pitches, with 46 strikes and 3 missed bats. That's pathetic. There's no other way around it, and when your results already aren't impressive, it's generally a bad idea to play like ass in the field as well. Wakamatsu's done the right thing by supporting his pitcher and conceding that those were tough plays, but at the very least, Lowe gave Tulowitzki an extra base and then blew a chance to get him at third on Gonzalez' bunt. If Lowe makes a better toss to Beltre, the entire game would've been different.
Anyway. I know you have it in you to be a dominant reliever, Mark. I know it. The quality of your stuff is there for everyone to see. For the love of God, pitch better.
- Mariner offense by month:
April: .302 wOBA
May: .310 wOBA
June: .329 wOBA
Thanks to Lopez and Beltre deciding to chip in, this team is finally starting to hit. And things'll be looking up even more pretty soon when Kenji's able to replace the three-headed monster behind the plate. This is finally looking like the lineup we were supposed to have from the beginning of a season. If only Griffey weren't, y'know, him.
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