Two fantastic, must read pieces about Charlie Morton by Dejan Kovacevic (part 1, part 2). There are a lot of things that get confirmed throughout the course of the article that I’ve been guessing about for the last couple months, such as Joe Kerrigan telling Morton to stop throwing his sinker because it was a bad pitch and Morton using a splitter/changeup along with a more traditional circle-change this year.
What I really like is the very first part about Morton’s sit-down this off-season with Jim Benedict and Ray Searage; I think most Major League coaching staffs would react to Morton’s struggles the same way Kerrigan did last year. They’d tell him the sinker stinks, they’d tell him his curveball and fastball were good and use them more, and they’d hammer away at that point until Morton proved he couldn’t pitch that way, at which point he’d be cast off into the scrap heap. As Benedict says in the beginning of the story, it’s a pretty bold decision to try and completely rebuild a 27-year old pitcher that has some established talent.
In any case, both parts put together are awfully long and there’s some pretty over-the-top stuff (Lyle Overbay says Morton has better stuff than Roy Halladay, for example), but it’s definitely worth a read.
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