This intro paragraph should be about how Mike Morin solidified his place in the Angels’ bullpen in 2015, setting himself up to take over for Joe Smith as the bridge to Huston Street in 2017 and beyond. Instead, because some miserably bad luck inflated his ERA into the stratosphere (6.37!), it’s about how the young right-hander is looking to rebound and reestablish himself as a reliever the Angels can count on at all, let alone in late innings.
Bad luck, you say? Yes, yes I do. Among all pitchers with at least 30 innings of work in a season, Morin finished 2015 with the second-worst left-on-base percentage (44.4%) of this century, the second-biggest ERA-minus-FIP difference (3.52) of the last five years, and the 29th-worst BABIP (.344) of the year. All this happened despite Morin striking out more than a quarter of the batters he faced (27.2%), walking far fewer (6.0%) than he did in 2014, and holding hitters to an average batted-ball velocity (87.08 mph) lower than Max Scherzer’s. So yeah, some extremely bad luck.
So long as Morin doesn’t try reinventing the wheel in 2016, he should see a nice reversal of fortune.
Position: RP | Age (2016): 25
Bats: R | Throws: R
Height: 6’4” | Weight: 220
2015 WAR: -0.9
2015 in a Tweet
By peripherals, Mike Morin improved across the board in 2015. But by measures tallied in the scorebook, his 2015 was a huge disappointment.
2016 Projections
[table id=180 /]Steamer and ZiPS seem to recognize Morin’s 2015 season for the façade it was, which is nice. PECOTA, meanwhile, continues to just slap more or less the same projection on every single pitcher in the Angels’ bullpen. I don’t get it, but whatever—that’s for them to sort out.
*PECOTA uses DRA in lieu of FIP
Pitch Usage
Morin might have been a little too reliant on his change-up late last year, but it’s understandable given how batters seemed to crush everything else he was throwing. It would surprise me if Morin doesn’t go back to his more even distribution of his fastball, slider, and change this season. If he doesn’t, hitters will be able to just start sitting on the change-up.
It should be interesting to see if his sinker makes a comeback this year as well. He used it about 10 percent of the time in each month of 2014, but almost didn’t use it at all in the second half of 2015.
Zone Profile
Boy, that is a whole lot of red in the middle of the plate against right-handed hitters. I wonder if that’s mostly for hitters sitting fastball who miss the change-up by three feet? Whatever it is, it’s probably best for Morin to work more of those pitches into one of the corners. Batters tend to tee off when Morin misses up in the zone, so the more he can stay at the knees the better.
Fun Fact
Morin is one of five players selected in the 13th round of the 2012 draft to make it to the big leagues thus far. That’s as many players as rounds 8–12 combined, and one more than the second rounders can claim.
What to Watch For
The thing to keep an eye on for Morin will be his BABIP. He’ll probably always surrender more infield hits than the average pitcher because of his knack for getting lefties to hit dribblers toward third base, but that alone shouldn’t cause him to have a BABIP 50 points worse than the league average. If the BABIP goes down to normal levels, so too will his ERA.
A Bold Prediction
Morin will absolutely kick butt in 2016. The end-of-the-bat dribbler to third will continue to allow batters to reach base against him at a higher clip than they really should, but that won’t keep him from locking down the set-up role for 2017 and allow the team to pass on resigning Joe Smith.
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More Previews: Yunel Escobar; Kole Calhoun; Mike Trout; Albert Pujols; C.J. Cron; Daniel Nava; Carlos Pérez; Johnny Giavotella; Geovany Soto; Andrelton Simmons; Cliff Pennington; Jered Weaver; Andrew Heaney; Garrett Richards; Hector Santiago; Matt Shoemaker; Huston Street; Nick Tropeano; Joe Smith
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