If you follow the Pirates’ minor leagues at all, you know that Bryan Morris is having a phenomenal season with Advanced-A Bradenton. In seven starts, he’s got a 0.66 ERA. That translates to just three earned runs in 40 2/3 innings with 36 strikeouts and just five walks. The hitters in the Florida State League don’t stand a chance against the guy right now.
But he’s still in Bradenton. Because of all his troubles last season with injuries and discipline, he’s repeating the level and since he missed all of 2007 with Tommy John surgery, he’s now 23 and old for the level. Starting him in Bradenton made sense after his struggles last year, but it’s hard to see what he’s got left to prove at this age and at this level. Of course the Pirates, like any other team, have internal promotion goals that aren’t necessarily related to things we can see from the public. Since we don’t know what these internal goals are, it’s hard to say that the Pirates’ standards are stricter than other teams, but there’s some notion that they might be with the way Rudy Owens stayed in West Virginia forever last year.
It’s obviously hard to judge something like this and it’s still early in Huntington’s career to make a judgment for sure, but players sure seem to be developing better under him and Kyle Stark than they did under the previous regime. But one thing that this front office does that seems a bit dicey to me is to apply a blanket standard to a lot of things, refusing to budge even in circumstances that might require a different approach.
In this case, Morris is a lot different from Owens. Not only is Morris old for his level, the 40 2/3 innings he’s thrown this year represent nearly half of his career high (96 in 2008). The team will obviously try to stretch him out quite a bit north of 100 innings this season, but there’s a good chance that he’ll be leashed sooner rather than later to prevent him from doubling his 72 inning count from last year, especially given his injury history. Morris is even different from Jeff Locke, who’s also off to a great start with Bradenton while repeating the level, because Locke is a year younger and because he’s thrown 125+ innings each of the last two seasons.
I’m not saying the Pirates are making the wrong move by leaving Morris in Bradenton, but I guess I’m curious what the internal goals for his promotion that aren’t being met are. Obviously rushing any pitcher along is a bad idea, but given the way Morris has pitched so far and his age and status on the 40-man roster (which means an option is being burned with him in the minors this year) there are also some real advantages to making sure he gets some significant time at Double-A this year.
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