Charlie Morton had a career year. In his first season with the Houston Astros, the 33-year-old right-hander is heading into October baseball with a record of 14-7 and a 3.62 ERA. The win total is a personal best, as are his 3.46 FIP and his 7.7 H/9.

Especially notable are his 10 strikeouts per nine innings and his 51.8% ground ball rate. The former is by far his highest, and the latter is by far his lowest. Morton was not only good during the regular season, he was also not the same pitcher he was in Pittsburgh.

“My stuff is different this year,” Morton told me on Thursday. “It’s not sinking as much — it’s harder, but it’s not sinking as much. My curve isn’t as vertical as it usually is; it’s not moving as much.

“When I was with the Pirates, from 2009-2015, I was a heavy sinker guy. I was over 60%, sinkers, and this year, against lefties, I might throw five sinkers in the whole game. My two-seam control has suffered a little bit, because I’m not throwing it as much. I’m four-seam, curveball, cutter, changeup — more of a mix. So really… it’s a balance of your identity, and of what you’re trying to do.” Read the rest of this entry »

Brent Suter succeeds in atypical fashion. The Milwaukee Brewers rookie throws his four-seam fastball roughly 70% of the time, and not because he lights up radar guns with it. He doesn’t. Suter’s (ahem) heater averages 86.3 mph, which is comfortably near the bottom of our velocity chart.

Nonetheless, batters have a hard time hitting it. As Jeff Zimmerman pointed out in a recent RotoGraphs piece, Suter gets a lot of swings and misses with his signature pitch despite its unhurried path to the plate. More importantly, he gets a lot of outs. In 76.2 innings this season, the deceptive southpaw has a 3.29 ERA.

Along with being sneaky fast, he is also smart. The Brewers drafted Suter out of Harvard, where he earned a degree in environmental science and public policy.

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Suter on how he gets hitters out: “I pitch a lot with my fastball. I trust it. It has a little bit of late-cut movement to it, plus I have kind of a hunched-over delivery, so I hide the ball a little longer and get some good extension on it. I feel like my fastball kind of plays. It gets on guys a little earlier than they expect.

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Travis Shaw had arguably the biggest hit of Milwaukee’s season yesterday. With his team on the verge of a crushing 10-inning loss, Shaw stroked a two-run, walk-off home run that helped keep the Brewers in the playoff hunt. A defeat wouldn’t have buried the surprise contenders, but it would have pushed them closer to the brink. They badly needed the win, and the Red Sox castoff provided it.

Even without Saturday’s heroics, Shaw has been a godsend for David Stearns and Co. Acquired over the offseason (along with a pair of promising prospects) for Tyler Thornburg, he’s contributed 31 long balls and an .877 OPS while solidifying the middle of the Milwaukee lineup. Last year in Boston, those numbers were 16 and .726.

The 27-year-old third baseman attributes his breakout to two factors: He’s playing every day, and he’s not stressing about things he can’t control.

“My mindset is a lot different,” Shaw told me earlier this week. “After what I went through last year, I needed to take a step back. There were some things I didn’t agree with, and there were some things I took the wrong way. I didn’t handle them very well

“I tried to play GM. I started reading into stuff — wondering why they’re doing this, why we’re doing that — and it ate at me. I worried about things I shouldn’t have worried about. In the second half, when I got to play, I felt like I had to get two or three hits to stay in the lineup. That didn’t bode well for my mental state, and it obviously didn’t work results-wise.” Read the rest of this entry »

As this year’s June amateur draft was about to get underway, The Sporting News published an article called Jo Adell Embraces Opportunity to Be Role Model for African-American Youth. The title was soon amended to include the word “Angels”: Anaheim selected the 18-year-old outfielder from Louisville, Kentucky, with the 10th-overall pick.

Adell’s intentions are admirable. Good role models are an asset to society, and as the son of an educator, the Ballard High School product understands that as well as anyone. He also knows that professional athletes — like it or not — serve as role models. Their words and actions influence others. With that influence comes responsibility.

Adell has a bright future in the game. Touted as a five-tool player — Byron Buxton has been a common comp — he slashed .325/.376/.532 over his first 222 professional plate appearances. That fact that those numbers came in Rookie ball stands out as meaningful. While Adell is talented, he’s also a few months removed from having received a high-school diploma. There’s still a lot for him to learn, and that includes how to go about being a role model as a professional athlete.

I asked a number of MLB players what advice they would give Adell with respect to his goal of becoming a role model, particularly for African-American youth.

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Chris Archer, Tampa Bay Rays pitcher: “Encouraging more black players to play baseball would be awesome. Baseball teaches you so many valuable life lessons. It’s not all about making it to the major leagues, but rather the opportunities that college may provide, or the life lessons you learn, like how to handle adversity.

“Being a role model is a large responsibility. If you want to be a role model, you’re not allowed to make mistakes. But the more role models you have — just in general — it’s going to be for the betterment of our community, our environment, and the world. My advice is to have the ability to speak out, but not be outspoken.”

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This past Wednesday, I talked to Oakland A’s pitcher Chris Smith for the first time in close to a decade. After we’d exchanged pleasantries, I asked the now-36-year-old right-hander how he’d describe his career. His answer came as no surprise.

“Oh, man, how about rollercoaster?,” suggested Smith. “It was a rollercoaster early on, and it’s continued to be a rollercoaster.”

That’s an apt assessment. Since being selected by the Red Sox in the fourth round of the 2002 draft, Smith has experienced ups and downs worthy of Six Flags. A dune buggy accident compromised his 2003 season, and he’s bounced — mostly in the minors — from Boston to the Brewers to the Mariners to the Padres to the A’s.

And then there was his three-year hiatus away from affiliated ball.

“When the Mariners let me go (in May, 2011), I thought I was done,” admitted Smith. “I got released because of my performance — not because of health — and I was OK with that. If I wasn’t good enough, it was time to move on. I went back to UC-Riverside and became the pitching coach there.”

It turned out that he wasn’t done after all. After a year spent coaching at his alma mater, Smith was convinced to make a comeback in independent ball. Read the rest of this entry »

For Paul DeJong, it’s all about calm clarity and process. The St. Louis Cardinals rookie believes in coming to the plate with a plan, but also with a clear mind. He feels that if he can stand in the batter’s box and just let things happen — simply recognize and react to pitches — the results will be there.

Three-plus months into his big-league career, the results are very much there. Since debuting with the Cardinals in late May, the 24-year-old infielder has slashed a heady .287/.321/.533. His right-handed stroke has produced 100 hits, 43 of which have gone for extra bases. His 21 home runs are tops on the team.

He reached St. Louis in short order. A fourth-round pick in 2015 out of Illinois State University — DeJong has a degree in biochemistry — he had barely over 1,000 minor-league plate appearances to his credit when he got called up. Based on his performance thus far, that was enough to prepare him to handle big-league pitching.

DeJong talked about his cerebral-yet-simple approach when the Cardinals visited Fenway Park in mid-August.

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DeJong on hitting with a clear mind: “I’ve made a lot of jumps as a hitter, going from the college level to the big leagues in two years. As much as anything, I’ve tried to slow things down as much as I can. When I get into problems is when I get sped up.

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Two summers ago, I asked Greg Mroz — then a radio broadcaster for the Clinton Lumber Kings — which of their players I should interview and write about. He recommended Zack Littell. I proceeded to do so for a Sunday Notes column, despite never having heard of him. Not too many people had. At the time, Seattle’s selection in the 11th round of the 2013 draft barely registered a blip on prospect radar.

Mroz deserves some props, because Littell is now living large. Playing for two different organizations, at two different levels and for three different teams, Littell finished this season with a record of 20-1. The most recent of his victories came on Wednesday with Minnesota’s Double-A affiliate, the Chattanooga Lookouts, in the Southern League playoffs.

No one saw it coming — you can’t predict 20-1 — and the same could probably be said of his multiple changes of address. Seattle swapped Littell for James Pazos last November, and the Yankees subsequently traded him to the Twins as part of July’s Jaime Garcia deal.

“The first one was out of nowhere,” Littell told me. “I was at home, hanging out in the offseason, and got a call — one minute I was a Mariner, and the next minute I was a Yankee. Coming to the Twins… I got scratched from a start the night before, so I kind of knew something was up, but I thought I was going to the A’s because of all the Sonny-Gray-to-the-Yankees rumors. But when I got the call from (New York GM Brian) Cashman, he told me I was going to the Twins.”

The 21-year-old North Carolina native is smart enough to know that W-L records are to be taken with a grain of salt. Read the rest of this entry »

Mikey York was coming off Tommy John surgery when the Tampa Bay Rays drafted him out of the College of Southern Nevada in the fifth round of last year’s draft. It soon became clear that he wasn’t fully recovered. The Las Vegas native was shut down after allowing 16 runs in just 9.1 innings at Rookie-level ball.

This year was a different story. York didn’t take the mound until late June, but once he did, he was lights out. In 11 starts between short-season Hudson Valley and Low-A Bowling Green, the 21-year-old right-hander allowed just 36 hits in 61 innings. He walked 11 and fanned 53, and finished the campaign with a 0.89 ERA.

Along with a repaired ulnar collateral ligament, the promising youngster possesses big-league bloodlines. His father, Mike York, played 13 professional seasons and had stints with the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Cleveland Indians. Blessed with a feel for his craft and a bulldog mentality — Nolan Ryan and Greg Maddux are role models — Mikey York aspires to follow in dad’s footsteps as a Tampa Bay Ray.

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York on his repertoire and approach: “My biggest thing is that I like to command my fastball — throw it for strikes, get ahead early, work on the hitters. I like to get them off balance by mixing speeds, working inside and outside, changing eye levels. Most importantly, I let them put the ball in play.

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Daulton Varsho is a Cheesehead at heart. He hails from Chili, Wisconsin, attended high school in nearby Marshfield, and played collegiately at UW-Milwaukee. Summer ball also found him close to home. The 21-year-old catcher strapped on his gear for the Eau Claire Express, in the wood-bat Northwoods League.

He’s currently hanging his hat in the Pacific Northwest. Selected in the second round of this year’s draft by the Arizona Diamondbacks, Varsho is beginning his career with the short-season Hillsboro (Oregon) Hops. The environs have been to his liking. With the Northwest League playoffs set to begin, Varsho’s left-handed stroke has produced a .311/.368/.534 slash line.

His rooting interests have largely been geographic, but there is a notable — and perfectly plausible — exception. Varsho is a Packers fan, and he went to Badgers games growing up, but he didn’t root for the Brewers. His baseball allegiances were with the Philadelphia Phillies, with whom his father — former big-league outfielder Gary Varsho — was the bench coach during his childhood.

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When Seattle selected JP Sears 333rd overall in this year’s draft, they knew they were getting a pitcher with a propensity for punch outs. In his junior season at The Citadel, the 21-year-old left-hander fanned 142 batters — the most in Division I baseball — in 95.1 innings. What they couldn’t possibly have known was that his strikeout rate would rise once he got to pro ball.

In 17 relief appearances between short-season Everett and Low-A Clinton, the 11th-round pick struck out — drum roll, please — a staggering 51 batters in 27.2 innings. He also allowed just 13 hits and two earned runs.

You can’t hit what you can’t see, and according to Clinton Lumber Kings pitching coach Doug Mathis, that’s the secret to the southpaw’s success.

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