Jays Blown Out for the First Time This Year, Lose to White Sox
by Tom Dakers on Apr 14, 2010 10:43 PM EDT
in Toronto Blue Jays Game Recaps
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PrintOur first loss by more than a run this year. It won't be the last, with young pitchers (and Brian Tallet) this will happen on occasion.
Brandon Morrow looked ok for the first 4 innings but then gave up a grand slam in the fifth. He's going to have days like this. Hopefully not too many. Amazingly he only gave up 1 walk, but he was hit hard and often. 8 hits in his 4 innings plus, 2 homers and 3 strike outs.
Morrow getting beat on did give us our first look at Merkin Valdez. I guess we could give him a bit of a pass since he hadn't pitched in a long while, but he was terrible. 3 runs off 2 hits and 2 walks in an inning. Jeremy Accardo also got into the game and 'only' gave up a run in his 2 innings, off 4 hits, he wasn't impressive either. Camp and Janssen pitched the last two innings and managed not to give up any more runs.
Offensively we were about as bad. Only two hits; Randy Ruiz got a hit (and stole a base) and Jose Bautista drove him in. Everyone else went 0 for. Randy's steal was because the Sox decided to play behind him at first, so since they were offering the base, he took it.
No Jays of the Day today. Surprise. Suckage Jay was Morrow (-.268).
Not much else worth saying about that game. I really don't see how Cito can justify Lyle Overbay playing against lefties anymore. He is 0 for 11 against them so far and really has looked terrible while not hitting them. Not that he has been smoking the ball off right handers but his track record is good against RHP and unacceptable against LHP. I can sort of understand giving him a shot at showing he could do the job to start the season but he hasn't. Add insult to injury, he missed scooping a short hop throw from John McDonald (that for some reason wasn't called an error). If you aren't going to hit you better make the plays in the field.
So the idea of him building some trade value has flown out the window. He better get hitting soon or come May he might be released, if the team decides Brett Wallace can handle the job. Or maybe they'll give Brian Dopirak a chance. We released Frank Thomas when Frank was hitting better than Lyle is.
Even with the bad loss we are 6-3, now tied with Tampa Bay for first in the East. Tomorrow night Dana Eveland tries to get us a series tie. Freddy Garcia goes for the Sox.
Bastian has a quote from Cito on Morrow:
"He's still kind of having his Spring Training right now." Morrow missed roughly 2 weeks in spring with r. shoulder issue.
Seems a fair way to look at it. It's a learning year and Morrow might as well learn how to handle starts at the major league level.
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Where's The Electricity From Morrow?
He didn’t look good to me at all today, irrespective of the runs he gave up. I saw the telecast, and he was mostly 91-92 MPH all right with some 90’s, 93’s, a couple 94’s and one 96’er mixed in. Jonh Danks’ velocity almost matched Morrow’s all night.
And not that velocity is everything, but when you’re essentially a two pitch pitcher like Morrow is, with imperfect control and a straight fastball, you’re not going to succeed often. Tabler & Martinez were trying to sell viewers on the fact that Morrow is similar to Burnett, but I didn’t see that. They’re similar in the ‘control’ sense and ‘two pitch repetoire’ sense, but Burnett throws harder and has better & more consistent bite on the curveball. Maybe Morrow didn’t have his good hook tonight, I donno; it was good on occassion and flat other times.
That said, I’m ok with letting Morrow get starts until the end of May to see what happens. Again, I’m not concerned with the runs he gave up tonight – more concerned with the modest velocity and so-so breaking pitch. He has to throw harder and have better BP to survive with only two pitches. If at the end of May he’s still throwing like this, I would put him in the pen where he can go all out and regain the electric velocity he used to have. But maybe he’s still recovering from ‘dead arm syndrome’ he had in spring training.
All radar guns read different, if it's measured at the release point or at the plate you get different readings.
I wouldn’t get worked up about the readings they get on the TV. It’s not like those guys are scouts that know exactly what they are doing. File it under ‘he had a bad start’ and see where we are next time. We’ve been consistently a couple of mph below what guys are supposed to throw on the TV readings.
Thats all fine and dandy, but being the baseball Junkie I am, I know that Danks is not really a power pitcher. He usually rests around 90-93; thats where he was tonight. The fact that Danks was essentially matching Morrow tells me that no matter what the gun was reading, Morrow wasn’t throwing all that hard – relative to what he can do. And Morrow will not that well at a reduced velocity at this time.
But, let’s see what happens the next couple times out. Maybe he’ still fatigued – willing to give the benefit of the doubt .
probably a combination
of it being early in the season (it takes some, though not all, power pitchers a bit to start hitting the high-90s), Morrow still getting warmed up after limited time this spring, and the fact that he’s just not going to throw quite as hard as a starter as he did in the pen.
"Let us go forth awhile, and get better air in our lungs. Let us leave our closed rooms... The game of ball is glorious." - Walt Whitman
Good news out of all of this?
Travis d’Arnaud is tearing the ball in Dunedin. Today’s line were:
4-6
3 RBIs
1 2B
1 SB
Seems someone wants a promotion.
and you're missing the fact that
his overall stat line is .423 with 2 home runs in addition to today’s performance.
10,610 attendance, an all time low?
I wish pierzynski had gotten beaned.
by torontocoltsfan on Apr 14, 2010 11:29 PM EDT reply actions
i'm all for giving morrow a really extended look as a starter
i think he should get every chance. he has great stuff from what i’ve read and we acquired him for that role. for some reason, he’s growing on me despite his performance. i think he might end up being one of my more liked players. him, marcum and mutton chops.
Yeah I can't see any chance that they won't have him in the rotation for at least a couple of months.
Barring injury of course.
he kinda reminds me of a kazmir type situation
few ptiches, dominant stuff but lacking some serious control. i just hope that we manage to fix it rather than with kazmir where he never quite got it all together. i mean now hes what? the 5th starter on the angels?
He didn't have dominant stuff tonight
Far from it unfortunately.
i dont mean in this particular game
i mean in general…
I remember watching Morrow pitch for Seatlle 2 years ago out of the pen. 97-98 on the fastball and same type of breaking pitch we saw tonight. His control was on that game, and he mowed down the Yankees. It was something to behold.
That was his first major league start, not out of the pen.
That’s the sort of potential you’re getting.
i don't know how much they want to give wallace in AAA before calling him up
even if (fingers crossed) overbay were gone soon i doubt we’d see wallace right away. id bet dopirak would get time for a bit to give wallace more time in AAA. he started slow the first few games but these past few hes started to really pick it up. also, i think it would be silly to send snider down as was being discussed earlier in that post about fred lewis. theres absolutely nothing that can be accomplished by sending him there…aside from killing his confidence, hes already proven time and time again that AAA pitching is no match for him. So, what he really needs is time to adjust to major league pitching. Is it allowed within the league rules to hire additional trainers to work specifically with individual players? I think maybe just giving him extra attention hopefully he can find whats ailing him.
Yeah, no way Snider goes down.
Wallace, as long as he proves he can play first and I can’t see any reason he wouldn’t be able to, I wouldn’t be surprised if the team called him up any time after May 1, depending on when Overbay turns things around. Overbay will start hitting right handers at some point, I would think. I can’t see why he would have forgot how over the winter. Lefties he hasn’t hit for years and I doubt that will change, despite Tabler telling us, over and over tonight, that Lyle hits lefties just fine.
haha was he really? i missed the game (not too fussed to be honest...)
yea i mean it doesnt seem like hes even come close to hitting a left handed pitch most of the season. its not as though hes making contact and getting fly ball outs or even ground balls for that matter….its alot of swings and misses. its just too bad that we might not be able to get anything in return anymore…we might have outwaited that opportunity.
and yea i mean id love to see wallace sooner rather than later
but i have a funny feeling that the organization might not want to bring him up because it might seem like theyre rushing him to the american media? although most of what ive read from espn and such said that hes major league ready so maybe it wouldnt be as surprising. any word on if theres anything different about mills this season? hes just rolling so far…and i cant believe noone commented about lewis’ near no hitter the other day for new hampshire. wasnt he one of our better prospects?
no, he’s not one of our better prospects, though he’s a decent pitcher probably. Gets groundballs, but is already 25 and doesn’t post awesome strikeout/walk ratios.
o ok
well it would be nice to see him progress. i mean litsch and some of these guys weren’t expected to be good prospects but we seem to just build good pitchers in our system no matter who they are.
true, but Litsch is two months younger than Perez
and already has 50 major league starts under his belt, with solid success.
"Let us go forth awhile, and get better air in our lungs. Let us leave our closed rooms... The game of ball is glorious." - Walt Whitman
i did
It was in the recap of the romero near no hitter. The one hit he gave up was a dribbler through the infield. I think you will see him at some point. He had a great year last year and has pitched 10 innings this year and has given up just 1 hit. Plus he has the advantage of being on the 40 man roster alreast.
by NHfishercatsfan on Apr 15, 2010 6:43 AM EDT via mobile up reply actions
Someone contact Rogers and find out how long they can take 10 000 in the stands ?
I’ll start buying ten thousand seat packs !
lucas
by TorontoBluejays10 on Apr 15, 2010 2:34 AM EDT via mobile reply actions
While Morrow may deserve a pass...
I’m sorry to say that I don’t think the same goes for Accardo. I know that Cito drove this guy nuts last year with all the Vegas-TO flights, but it seems that he doesn’t have the will to succeed here.
Maybe it’s only me, and I didn’t like him last year as well, but I’m sure that we can do better than Accardo.
But that’s just me…
Festina Lente
Morrow will do well....
provided he can learn to mix up his pitches on a regular basis. I am a Mariner fan and I was not at all happy with this trade(as I know some of you weren’t as well). When he can mix in an off-spead/breaking pitch with that fastball of his he WILL be lights out. That’s what he did against the Yankee’s in ‘08 and he had a no-hitter going into the 8th for his first major league start. Be patient and don’t let this one bad start influence your opinion of him. I wish him luck even though he’s not an M anymore and will continue to follow his progress.
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