Charlie Morton is coming back

You’ve waited for it all summer and now it’s finally here: Ross Ohlendorf’s strained lat muscle that will land him on the DL and probably end his season means that the one and only Charlie Morton is coming back to Pittsburgh to replace him. If Ross Ohlendorf was extremely unlucky to go 1-11 this year (dude threw 10 pitches on Monday and got shouldered with the loss) Morton’s 1-9 record is much more a product of his getting the snot hammered out of him on a nightly basis. Even though people like me still think that his ridiculous 9.35 ERA is a product of an insane and unsustainable 25% HR/FB rate (translation: one of every four flyballs Morton gave up left the park), it’s hard to argue Morton was anything but bad in his first stint with the Pirates this year.

His Triple-A numbers weren’t exactly great, either. His 3.82 ERA looks respectable, but he only struck out 6.0/9 innings with 3.4 walks/9. That’s the sort of line that if he did it in Pittsburgh this year I’d have said something like, “It’s encouraging but he hasn’t been as good as that ERA suggests (Indy FIP: 4.23).” In Indianapolis that line just isn’t terribly impressive because he’s giving up more hits than he did last year at Triple-A with fewer strikeouts and more walks.

Still, I think that Chuck’s success is pretty integral to the Pirates not being a 105-loss team again in 2011 so I’m going to try and find something to be a little hopeful about. One of the things that really stood out to make Morton an attractive-looking prospect was that he was both able to strike hitters out and keep the ball on the ground. His minor league ground ball rate was right around 50% before this year and it had hovered right around 50% with both the Pirates and Braves in 2008 and 2009. With the Pirates this year, his home run problem was obvious and his groundball rate dipped to 45.6%, mostly thanks to a ridiculously high line drive rate (24.4%). Back down in Indianapolis, he’s getting groundballs almost 54% of the time and his line drive rate is back down to 15.5%, which is below his career rate in the minors.

At least the ground balls are a positive sign, even if his strikeout numbers aren’t great. I’m not really sure what the Pirates wanted Morton to work on with Indy, but keeping the ball in the park and on the ground would seem like a logical starting point given his disaster in Pittsburgh. I’m also hopeful that the absence of Joe Kerrigan will let Morton loosen up a bit and not completely fall apart whenever someone reaches base. Really, just about anything would have to be progress over what we saw earlier in the year. I hope.