I think I’ve said this before, but I’m not sure there’s been a Pirate pitcher as frustrating as Charlie Morton in a long time. Given the club’s recent history with Tom Gorzelanny, Ian Snell, Kip Wells, Oliver Perez, Kris Benson, Jason Schmidt, etc., that’s saying quite a lot. I wasn’t able to watch today’s game (not by choice but by blackout), but I did listen to almost all of the early part of it and it sounded like save Dunn’s home run, the Nationals dinked Morton to death in the fourth inning today. Players made errors, softly hit balls just eluded fielders, and runs just poured in. It felt like with some better luck, Morton could’ve come out of the whole thing unscathed but then it almost always seems like that when he pitches.
It feels like a bad joke to keep saying that Morton’s better than this when there are almost no on-field results from 2010 to back that kind of statement up, but he’s been so bad this year that it barely makes sense. Every time he goes out there and pitches terribly, I feel like I’m missing something obvious. In any case, I’ve resigned myself to hoping that he can pull himself together over the winter because I just don’t see how it’s going to happen in the next month.
