Zach Duke
Paul Maholm
Ross Ohlendorf
Tonight we'll be taking a look at Charlie Morton, who has everything necessary to be the Pirates ace in 2010. He has more movement on his pitches and better stuff than anybody in the Pirates organization, and with some more maturity and work, he could develop into one of the National League's best pitchers. Let's take a look at those numbers:
Morton has a very small major league sample size to look at. He pitched 74 innings in 2008 for the Braves, and 97 innings in 2009 split between the Braves and the Pirates. In his time with the Pirates, he was a pretty good pitcher. His season ERA ended at 4.55, but it would have been much, much lower if not for a terrible 10 earned run appearance against the Cubs late in the season. That's what you already know, here's what you might not have.
Morton has the possibilities to be a pretty good strikeout pitcher, although his K/9 fell slightly last year. The movement he puts on his pitches gets a lot of ugly swings. I'd definitely expect to see a consistently higher strikeout rate from Morton than what he put up last year. His walks are a problem, while he did improve on the 4.97 BB/9 he posted in 2008, he still has a lot of work to do in that aspect. His time working with Joe Kerrigan should do him a lot of good there, we saw a drastic improvement in Ohlendorf's walk rate from 2008 to 2009, which can probably be largely attributed to Kerrigan's work. If Morton can strikeout more batters and walk less batters, he will easily be one of the Pirates best pitchers.
Morton's 2009 was really defined by a couple of awful outings. His FIP was 4.15, which was significantly better than his season ERA. His BABIP was .310, which is just about average, so there is not much to take from that. The most encouraging thing we see in Morton's stats is the outstanding .65 HR/9 rate. That tied him with Paul Maholm for the best on the team last year, and it really shows that Morton knows how to keep the ball in the yard. He is right about at 50% in groundball ratio, I would like to see that improve a little bit, but for now it's pretty good.
The biggest thing with Morton is going to be control. If he can locate the ball better and walk less batters, he should have a very solid year for the Pirates.
My 2010 prediction for Morton: 13-14, 4.25 ERA, 5.85 K/9, 3.00 BB/9