Phillies' Morton still seeking identity
CLEARWATER, Fla. When the Pirates told Charlie Morton to forget everything he ever knew about pitching, it was February 2011, and the 27-year-old righthander was the worst pitcher in baseball. Jim Benedict, a pitching whisperer so revered that the Marlins this winter traded Pittsburgh a minor-league player for the rights to hire him as a vice president, saw Morton straining to be something he was not.
CLEARWATER, Fla.
When the Pirates told Charlie Morton to forget everything he ever knew about pitching, it was February 2011, and the 27-year-old righthander was the worst pitcher in baseball. Jim Benedict, a pitching whisperer so revered that the Marlins this winter traded Pittsburgh a minor-league player for the rights to hire him as a vice president, saw Morton straining to be something he was not.
"A guy's mechanics on the mound," Benedict told Morton, "are a manifestation of their personality."
If that's the case, it is complicated for Morton, 32. He scrutinizes every detail. He admits to over-thinking. He speaks in blunt words about years of failure. He sometimes wonders how he has stuck around despite frequent injuries and inconsistent performances.
"I assume it's because of the stuff that comes out of my hand," Morton said. "The idea that this guy's stuff has to play at some point, in some capacity. That's the only thing I can think of."
The stuff, it is confounding. Just four starting pitchers since 2011 have induced a higher percentage of ground balls than Morton. Pirates fans dubbed him "Ground Chuck." He signed a three-year, $21 million deal before the 2014 season.
But he has never made 30 starts in a season. He had Tommy John surgery and two hip surgeries. He led the majors in hit batsmen in 2014, when he threw just 157 innings. The Pirates, who invested so much in Morton's body and mind, traded him last December to the Phillies in a glorified salary dump.
Someone still believes in the stuff because of what happened five Februarys ago, when Benedict and Pirates pitching coach Ray Searage instructed Morton to drop his arm and throw from a three-quarters angle.
"I started doing that, and I started having success," Morton said. "It wasn't because I changed something about my personality. It wasn't because I changed something about me mentally. It was that I changed something physically, which allowed me to be who I was."
So, who is Charlie Morton?
"I don't know," he said this week from a picnic table inside Bright House Field. "I sink the ball. I have a good curveball. I get hit hard by lefties. I do OK against righties. And here I am."
Charlie Morton is not Roy Halladay. This much is certain. He emulated the former Cy Young winner's mechanics once Benedict lowered Morton's arm motion. The resemblance was striking.
"It definitely looks like me," Halladay said on June 5, 2011, a day after Morton allowed two runs in seven innings against the Phillies to lower his ERA to 2.52 over his first 11 starts of the season.
He has a 4.16 ERA in 96 starts since.
"I wasn't trying to be Roy Halladay," Morton said. "I was trying to be a better version of me by trying to find a way to make my body work."
Eventually, his body broke. His hip hurt before 2011 started. The new mechanics simplified everything else, but with time, Morton began to question them. He compensated for the nagging hip pain.
"I was putting my arm in some pretty difficult positions and putting stress on my arm," Morton said. "I came back in 2012, and that was it."
He underwent Tommy John surgery that June, and his pitching motion never looked like Roy Halladay's again.
Identity is a word that bothers Charlie Morton. He thinks about his 2-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter, and he starts to project.
"You have an idea of who you want them to be," Morton said. "But at the same time, is that who they are? That is a struggle that I'm going to have. There are societal implications to that. And expectations. We put expectations on other people and ourselves. Those expectations aren't necessarily realistic. When we talk about 'identity,' we're constantly trying to mold people like a ball of clay."
Identity? Identity is hard to establish amid failure and the constant process of being built and rebuilt and rebuilt. In life, Morton said, you create a routine with a clear methodology for achieving a stated goal. In baseball, it does not always matter where the pitch was, how hard it was, or how much it moved.
Not if the other guy hit it.
"Identity," Morton said, "means you're constantly fighting yourself, your own expectations and everyone else's expectations. It's really bizarre."
The mental part of the game is difficult to unlock. Halladay often spoke about his conversations with Harvey Dorfman, a sports psychologist who the pitcher said deserved credit for his success. Morton, after being traded from Pittsburgh, left behind an extensive support system that included Bernie Holliday, the organization's director of mental conditioning.
"If you have a thought process that's wrong and it's affecting your pitching and making you doubt yourself, improving on that is the exact same thing as if I have some sort of strength deficiency in my legs," Morton said. "What do I do? I go into the weight room and I talk to the strength coach. It's the exact same thing. We're all just trying to get better."
Twenty minutes after he was traded last December, Morton received a call from Phillies general manager Matt Klentak. Morton, who could be a free agent at season's end, thanked him for the opportunity. The Phillies have some faith in his right arm.
"It gives me time," Morton said.
Time to think.
@MattGelb www.philly.com/philliesblog