Was his last stop in LA a step forward for Charlie Morton? Or an aberration? I want to believe it’s a step forward, but of course questions like that can’t really be answered anywhere but on the mound. We go a ways towards an answer tonight, though, because Morton makes his sixth start of the season against the Cubs tonight.
Where Morton was still getting tripped up in LA was with the longball. His flyball rate is actually down a bit ths year, but a mind boggling (literally) 35% of flyballs hit against him have gone for home runs. Last year, that number was 7%. Matt at Pittsburgh Lumber Company did a bit of digging into my open question of whether Morton was tipping pitches out of the stretch and decided that the answer is “definitely maybe.” Read his post and keep an eye on Chuck on the mound tonight.
Morton’s mound opponent is Ted Lilly, which means that Steve Pearce will get his first start of 2010. Andrew McCutchen is back after sitting out a game with a sore ankle, which is good. Bobby Crosby is batting leadoff, which is confusing. First pitch is 7:05, Clemente/Cangelosi is after the jump.
Not sure what this is? Check here and here. Short version: in the comments pick the Pirates you think will be most and least valuable in today’s game. If you haven’t jumped aboard yet, it’s been a lot of fun so far and now’s as good a time as any to join in.
Ryan Church’s big homer and Octavio Dotel’s one-run save made them last night’s Clemente picks. Unsurprisingly, no one picked either, though bwzimmerman had Church and switched his pick to Steve Pearce. The was some movement on the Cangelosi points, though, as pdiddy0020 grabbed two points in his season debut by picking Aki Iwamura and was joined by Garrett122. No one had Ryan Doumit as the goat last night, though, so those two were the only two that scored at all.
The standings
- Woodward: 20
- dafletch: 17
- hisjazziness: 15
- hwtrine68: 13
- Wizard of Woz: 11
- Carnegie Chip, brian2: 10
- whygavs: 9
- UtesFan89, North Shore Ryan, Don_Madden: 7
- apk, Garrett122: 6
- edgeman2k: 5
- dboz, appeal2smail, TuckerD13, Nate: 4
- TomKaikis, Joek, tylerrcurtis, TheJewelryMan!, fruitbat, IndianaJohns04 , bwzimmerman, Garrett122: 3
- PatrickHealy, MattB, SteelCity66, BadAndy, spazaru, Adam_Reynolds, Mr. Ando, jac8, pdiddy0020: 2
- FSU Bucs, Christy, appeal2smail, SeanGentile, shsteimer, TheHulk, Traco Bucco, Tate, ndbrian, Neopold: 1
- Everyone else: 0
- NSN, CoryR, Mosca, wk kortas, danatural, J Latrobe, Teflon, Cecilio_Guante, PHook4000: -1
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
