It’s Tough Not to Be Encouraged

Okay – so I get it. I get the fact that we can’t overreact to what we saw from Brandon Morrow last night. One great outing against a team like the A’s is not enough to justify the assumption that a pitcher has turned things around. Dave Cameron explained that rather nicely.

However, I was at the game last night, and it’s really tough for me to not become hopeful. I know it’s the A’s, and I know there were some deep fly balls that may have been gone at other ballparks, but he was absolutely brilliant.

We got a glimpse last night of that potential – that potential we all know he has, but just hasn’t been able to realize with any type of consistency. He threw strikes, he mixed pitches, he missed bats, and he went deep into the game. He threw 60 fastballs – 73% of them were strikes, and 5 of them missed bats. He threw 19 sliders – 63% of them were strikes, and 6 of them missed bats. His change and curve also induced one swinging strike each.

He allowed one hit, an infield one no less, and a total of one line drive, in 8 innings of scoreless, two walk baseball (both of which came with two outs in the eighth). It’s nearly impossible to find any flaws in his line, so I’m not going to try to.

So what does this mean for Brandon Morrow’s future? Well, nothing if he can’t translate it into 2010 – but either way, this was certainly the ideal way for Brandon to end his, as Matt Pitman so eloquently put it, rollercoaster 2009.

And being reminded that Morrow has the ability to pitch like that, makes me just a tad bit more excited for spring training.

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