Pittsburgh Pirates’ Morton apt to bounce-back

Pittsburgh Pirates starter Charlie Morton had one of the all-time worst outings by a Pirates pitcher. Lasting only 0.2 innings against the Washington Nationals, Morton’s day was mercifully over before the first inning was completed.

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For Pittsburgh Pirates fans, this caused quite the stir and inspired borderline panic in some. Over the past few weeks of starting pitching dominance by Gerrit Cole, A.J. Burnett, and Francisco Liriano, the conversation inevitably turns to Morton each time. That conversation becomes a swirl of questions. Can he keep it up? Not if, but when he regresses, how bad will it be? How does this all tie into the Pirates’ approach at the trade deadline? All are valid queries. Pirates fans invariably fall into one of two camps – the one that is comfortable with Morton or the one that paces during each of his starts just waiting for the perceived inevitable.

For those in the second camp, consider this – despite perception, Morton does a good job of bouncing back in his very next start after a clunker.

Before we get into the stats, let’s set a baseline. Everyone has their own definition of a “good start.” In common baseball circles, a “quality start” is defined as a start in which a pitcher goes for at least six innings allowing no more than three earned runs. Using this definition, I dug into some stats and saw that Morton does a particularly good job of bouncing back from bad starts in his very next outing, as you’ll see below.

2013

In 2013, Morton did not have many non-quality starts in his game logs. In the corresponding bounce back starts, Morton was electric with an 18-4 k/bb ratio (4.50). Aside from a three-walk outing, Morton concentrated on control in his starts immediately following the bad ones.

2014

2014 is an interesting case. Determined to bust up my theory, Morton actually had four bad starts in a row. For the sake of integrity, they are included here, but one can easily draw a correlation to the fact that he was not healthy at the time – the hip issue revealed itself around that time and despite Morton’s attempts to pitch through it, the results were just not there. Keeping those aside, 2014 was more of the same from Ground Chuck, with his bounce backs highlighted by an 11 strikeout, two earned run effort that ironically resulted in a Pittsburgh Pirates loss.

2015

In 2015’s small sample size prior to yesterday’s debacle, Morton had but one start less than six innings. In his start against Atlanta on June 5, Morton went 5 innings, giving up three earned runs. It was a mixed bag for Morton as he walked three against only one strikeout. In this very next start, Morton responded strongly, going for 7.1 innings of shutout ball while striking out six.

Even though his Sunday start against the Nationals was perhaps an all-time low, Morton has shown the ability to get right back on track rather quickly.

That is not to say that we can say with reasonable certainty that Morton will maintain his early-season success. but, for those waiting for the other shoe to drop on Morton, you may have to wait longer than his next outing.

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