Brandon Morrow Looking Sharp; Blue Jays Win 5th Spring Game In A Row
It’s official: we’ve got a winning streak on our hands.
Sure, it’d be nicer to say if today was say, April 13th and not March; but I’m sure we can all agree that it’s a lot more desirable to be talking about a 5-game winning streak as opposed to a losing one, no matter what time of year it is. Yesterday, the victim were the Orioles road squad, which featured the likes of Robert Endino, Endy Chavez, and…well, that’s about it really. I thought teams were supposed to have at least 5 regulars when they go on the road? Oh yeah, I suppose they brought out Nick Johnson too.
In any case, the O’s provided little trouble for starter Brandon Morrow, who looks to be in pretty good form already in just his 2nd start of the spring season, leading the Blue Jays to a 4-1 win over the O’s. The righty allowed just a hit through 3 innings of work, thowing 27-of32 pitches for strikes, and generating 6 of 9 outs via ground balls. The latter will probably be a key to his continued success in the upcoming season. Morrow had always been something of a fly ball pitcher, and while his strikeout stuff often got him by in tough situations, Morrow hasn’t quite blossomed into a pitcher who could consistently go deep into games. Keeping the ball down and pitching to get ground outs will go a long way towards improving his pitch efficiency.
I realise spring training numbers aren’t all that useful when it comes to evaluating this sort of thing, especially when a pitcher is facing the Oriole’s B-squad, but it’s of note that Morrow has a GO/AO ratio of 1.60 after giving up just 2 hits in 5 innings, even if he’s not striking out everyone he faces (3Ks so far). If he can bring something close to this to the regular season, Morrow might just finally shake that perpetual breakout label that’s been on him over the last few seasons his entire career.
Also of note: Travis Snider just keeps hitting this spring, going 1-for-2 in the DH spot and raising his spring average to .316 – he’s always done well in spring training though, so this is really no surprise. The bad? Edwin Encarnacion, who started the game at 1st base, and struck out 3 times. We’ve talked about on-field EE vs DH EE before…but let’s see how that situation develops over the spring.
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