Oh. Oh. Charlie Morton can't pitch at night. That was the sinking feeling I got shortly after releasing the last piece about Morton's SOMETIMES stellar pitching. I almost wanted to take it back.
"Sometimes," actually held true for about two innings, probably as long as the sun was in the sky. Morton got five of his first six outs on strikeouts, and six of his first eight. Those are numbers any pitcher can be proud of.
At least he lasted longer than his one-inning 10-run 90.0 ERA start against the Chicago Cubs. But maybe that wasn't really the case, because of where Chicago and Phoenix are longitudinally.
Chicago is at the eastern end of its (central) time zone. Go east across Lake Michigan and you're on eastern time. Meaning that it is about as dark at, say, 7:30 p.m. in Chicago as it is at 8:30 p.m. just a bit further east.
Phoenix is at the western edge of its (mountain) time zone. It's not much darker at, say, 8:00 p.m. local time than it would be at 7:00 p.m. in eastern California.
My guess is that in both cases, Morton started falling apart at the time that the klieg lights replaced sunlight. That would be a bit earlier in Chicago than in Phoenix.
And this is NOT a classic case of bad pitching. Sabermetrics credits Morton with a FIP (sabermetric ERA) of 5.01 based on one home run and one walk allowed over 3.1 innings. That's not good, but it's a lot better than the 21.60 ERA he actually posted. (Source: FanGraphs).
The difference can be attributed to 1) the vagaries of statistics, and 2) "soft tossing," which results from injury. An egregious example of this is the Yankees' injured Chien Ming Wang, whose 2009 ERA of 9.64 was about double his FIP, which approximated Morton's current one.
In Morton's case, it was tied to a BABIP (batting average of balls in play) of .702, more than double what is normal.
So it seems that Morton. who was a lion as long as there was daylight, suddenly became a lamb when he perhaps couldn't see properly. That may seem like a strange conclusion to some, but it is the one that suggests itself. And it fits the facts that I know.
Maybe it takes one to know one. Yours truly has night vision problems that make it inadvisable for him to drive, or perform other mechanical activities, outdoors, at night.
After he was traded to Atlanta, former Pirate Nate McLouth discovered some vision problems that may have held him back while he was in Pittsburgh. We should have a similar eye checkup for Morton, who we received in the trade.
As a former Pittsburgher, I know several local ophthalmologists who can at least give referrals.
Maybe the solution is to have Morton pitch only in day games. Perhaps we could have juggled his start with Dan McCutchen's to have Morton start Sunday afternoon.
But if we're going to force Morton to pitch at night, we'll need to find a way to avoid repeats of Friday's debacle.
Yesterday, we got a glimpse of Morton's potential greatness. But he will never be great, at least at night, if we don't figure out why he does so poorly at such times.
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