Relief pitcher Brandon Morow, who spent half of spring training dealing with a tender right shoulder, pitched in his second minor league game this afternoon and, at least by the numbers, it didn’t go well.
Morrow gave up four hits, a walk and five runs — including a three-run homer, an RBI single and an RBI triple — and got only one out before he was lifted. Ouch!
But this is spring training and there’s more to what happens here than numbers. I didn’t get any radar readings and neither did Morrow, but his fastball had some real hair when he got it over the plate. He got a lot of late swings off it.
Problem was he struggled to throw it for strikes and, when he fell behind, he’d take a little off it and get hit. That can’t happen during the regular season and my suspicion is that it won’t — at least like this — for one simple reason.
The mound on the minor league field where Morrow threw (along with Ryan Rowland-Smith in today’s game for Class AAA Tacoma) is steeper than the pitchers are accustomed to using. There hasn’t been a major league pitcher who’s thrown in a minor league game this month who hasn’t mentioned it.
Morrow doesn’t want to use it as an excuse, so I will. If the Mariners are going to send their pitchers down for games on the minor league fields, they’d better make sure the mound is sound.
Someday, a guy won’t just get shelled and shrug his shoulders about it. Someday a guy may develop a bad elbow or bad shoulder because of it. Many of the pitchers the Mariners have sent to the minor league camp for innings are recovering from injuries, so you know they’re putting max effort into their work. A mound that’s too steep doesn’t seem like a good combination. Somebody needs to fix it.
Morrow said it felt like his foot landed several inches lower than normal because of the steepness of the mound, which explains why so many of his pitches were too low.
Interestingly, Morrow pitched well in a minor league game two days ago, although that one was played on a different field. So that mound was OK?
“No, it was a bad one, too,” he said. “But I did better in that game so I didn’t complain about it.”
Rowland-Smith, who hasn’t given up a run in his Cactus League appearances this month, gave up one today but pitched well overall. He’s done nothing to prove he doesn’t belong in the Mariners’ bullpen, but the club has some difficult choices to make with guys who have thrown the ball well this month — Rowland-Smith, R.A. Dickey and Cha Seung Baek. Dickey is a Rule 5 draft pick and Baek is out of minor league options, meaning they both could be lost if the Mariners don’t put them on the opening-day roster.
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