Tons of Strikeouts and Walks From Morrow
The Major League leader in strikeouts per nine among starting pitchers, with 11.9, is Brandon Morrow. He is second among starting pitchers in BB/9 with 5.9. If you put that together, and add in his three hit batters, 84 of the 187 batters Morrow has faced have struck out, walked or been hit by a pitch: a hair under 45%. That is tops among qualified starting pitchers, Clayton Kershaw is next with 43%, then Rich Harden with 41%, and those are the only three pitchers above 40%. So Morrow is something of an outlier in terms of keeping the ball out of play on a per plate appearance basis.
Morrow’s strikeouts are a product of his second-lowest 70.9% contact rate (only Tim Lincecum’s is lower). His fastball is electric and the key to that tiny contact rate. Thanks to Harry Pavlidis we know the average fastball generates 16% whiffs (misses/swing not misses/pitch), but Morrow’s has a 23% whiff rate. Since fastballs are thrown about 65% of the time, those extra whiffs add up quickly over the course of a game.
As you would expect for whiff-generating fastball from a fly-ball pitcher, the fastball is generally found up in the zone. Here I plot how much more (red) or less (blue) often you find Morrow’s fastballs in each bin compared to the average RHP’s four-seamer.
You can see they tend to be up in the zone. Against RHBs they are more often inside compared to the average RHP, and against LHBs more often outside. High fastballs tend to be whiffed more often, but also give up more fly balls.
All those extra fastballs up-and-in to RHBs and up-and-away to LHBs are also a big reason for Morrow’s big walk rate. The secondary effect of all those walks is that Morrow has not been able to go deep into games for the Jays, getting to the 7th inning in just one of his eight games. Morrow’s huge strikeout rate makes him an exciting, flashy pitcher, but until he gets his walk rate down that excitement has to be tempered.
Dave Allen's other baseball work can be found at Baseball Analysts.
Check Morrow’s pitch mix in his starts. When he relies on the fastball and slider he gets hit. When he throws his curve and change he is more successful. Look back at his last four starts.
In Sunday’s start Morrow was under 50% fastballs and he pitched deep into the game with only one walk, I think.
A large part of it being his fastball sitting in the low 90’s and mixing with the splitter classification, it was about the same as always.
And seeing how he can barely throw his change even close to the zone it’s a non-factor.
So Morrow aspires to be the Marmol of starting pitching?
Maybe moving him to becoming a closer in the future won’t be the wrong idea.
Doesn’t hurt the Blue Jays to try him as a starter for now regardless
@opis: Your comment about Morrow’s fastball being “low 90’s” caught my eye.
I saw Morrow at Boston just last week and the stadium gun had it at 94-97mph (with several at the high end). From where I was sitting, it was just a blur. Made Lackey’s 90-91mph fastball look like it was walking up to the plate.
Anyway, I poked around some but couldn’t find mph data on this site. Am I not looking in the right place, or is that to be found elsewhere?
Vida—You can get those numbers on this site. Go to Morrow’s Player page —> Pitch Type —> Fastball (MPH). It’s the seventh item from the top. Anyway, he’s averaging 93.7 this year.
Thanks, Frank.
Good grief, it was staring me right in the face, but I always look at that data for the %’s. Selective attention is weird. Thanks again.
I’m loving the attention the Jays get on this site. Fangraphs has probably written 10 stories for every 1 ESPN writes (not just game recaps) on the Jays.
agreed. this site is boss for so many reasons, but it’s attention to all teams is near the top of the list
It’s hard to predict these things, but I think Morrow could be close to putting it all together quite respectably. Of his last six starts, three have been outstanding, two have been OK-to-decent, and one has been terrible (he said the implosion was the result of a mechanical flaw). If you toss the bad start, he’s walked 15, K’d 42, and allowed 27 hits (1 HR) over 30.1 innings during that stretch. In his latest start, he didn’t walk a batter until the 7th inning (he ended up with one walk).