Crooked Pitch

Brandon Morrow of the Seattle Mariners is a perfect late-season addition for fantasy baseball squads. The 24-year-old pitcher startled fans by almost throwing a no-hitter in his first career start. If he had completed the honorable milestone, he would have driven the final stake into the heart of the New York Yankees’ 2008 Regular Season.

He can drive a final stake into your fantasy baseball competitor’s season, too.

Most people shied away from the relief-pitcher fearing that he would produce Braden Looper-type statistics as a starter. But, now everyone wants him. The MLB sophomore sparkled in his debut as a starter and will likely become a part of the Mariners’ future pitching-staff.

In all of his minor league starts, Morrow only threw 82 pitches. In Friday’s game against the Yankees, he tossed a total of 106 pitches. He confessed that, “[he] was tired. [His] arm felt great, but [he] was tired.” Morrow’s arm will progressively adapt to pitching more innings. But for now, owners can count on him to pitch about five solid innings without giving up a plethora of runs.

Also, the youngster will not need a lot of time to adapt. The 2006 First-Round draft pick only needed a mere sixteen innings in the Minor Leagues before jumping into the Majors. It will only be a period of time before he evolves into a full-time starter capable of pitching eight innings or so.

Originally, scouting reporters believed that his small repertoire would not last six-innings. However, in Friday night’s miraculous start against the Yankees, he pitched strong through 7.2 innings. In fact, he would have lasted longer had Wilson Betemit not broken his no-hit bid scoring a run.

According to Pitch F/X, he threw his fastball 58% of the time on Friday night. As a mediocre relief pitcher, he depended on his fastball 76% of the time. He will be pure gold if he continues to utilize his full repertoire of a fastball, split-finger, and a curveball.

Brandon Morrow’s flaw had always been controlling his fabulous pitches. But, he had no evident issues during Friday night’s game. Joe Girardi commented, “When you have stuff like that and you can locate with that stuff, you’re going to shut down a lot of lineups. He was electric tonight.” He will continue to “shut down,” powerful line-ups in the future.

His average velocity during last night’s game was 95.7 MPH. USS Mariner, one of the most-popular blogs covering the Seattle Mariners, believes that if he continues to throw 95 MPH pitches most of the time, “he’s going to be terrific.”

At this moment, ESPN.Com claims that Morrow is owned in only 33.0% of its various leagues. Patrick Dahl of Rotoworld believes that the starter is, “worth a flier in mixed leagues.” A key acquisition now could be the difference between being glorified as the league champion and not even being in the playoff-picture.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 7th, 2008 at 7:03 pm and is filed under Fantasy Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.