Morton has no trouble with the curve: 'It's made him who he is'

NORTH PORT, Fla. -- If you like curveballs, you would have certainly enjoyed watching Spencer Strider and Charlie Morton both pitch for the Braves in Tuesday afternoon’s 3-0 win over the Tigers at CoolToday Park.

Strider appears set to add to his dominance with the addition of the curveball he reacquainted himself with this past winter. As for Morton, his great curveball stands as a primary reason that he is ready to enjoy the unique experience of pitching into his 40s.

“It’s made him who he is,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said. “That curve is why he is Charlie Morton.”

Strider’s new curveball has created a lot of buzz this spring and the results have been pretty impressive. He has tallied 13 strikeouts while not allowing a run over the nine innings totaled during his first three Grapefruit League starts. Three of the four strikeouts he tallied in Tuesday’s four-inning effort concluded with the curveball.

Morton followed by recording three strikeouts over 2 2/3 scoreless innings against the Tigers. The 40-year-old hurler was making his first spring appearance after choosing to pitch on the back fields before appearing in a Grapefruit League game. He has approximately a month to prepare for his expected start in the Braves’ third or fourth regular season game.

While Strider is introducing this new breaking ball to his repertoire, Morton is just trying to perfect what remains one of the game’s best pitches.

Morton’s curveball had a run value of +25 last year, per Baseball Savant. The only pitches with a higher run value were Gerrit Cole’s four-seam fastball, Logan Webb’s changeup, Zac Gallen’s four-seam fastball and Chris Bassitt’s sinker.

Reigning National League Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell had the second most effective breaking ball. His curveball had a +22 run value.

“It’s one of the best pitches in baseball in a number of ways,” Strider said. “It’s probably similar to my fastball in that everybody thinks about it when they come to the plate. When you talk about Charlie Morton, you talk about his curveball.”

Morton has surprised everyone, including himself, with the sustained success he has had during the latter part of his career. It looked like his career might be nearing an end once he left the Pirates to join the Phillies in 2016. But all he has done is tally the third-most wins (70) since the start of the 2018 season. His 18.4 fWAR within this span ranks 10th among all MLB pitchers.

“He’s a freak to me,” Snitker said. “It’s just amazing to me what he does at his age. I have respect for all Major League players, but the ones who have extended careers just blow me away.”

Morton posted a 4.54 ERA while making 162 career appearances (161 starts) for the Braves, Pirates and Phillies through the end of the 2016 season. His transformation actually began in Philadelphia during that 2016 season. Current Braves pitching coach Rick Kranitz was among the then-Phillies who suggested throwing the curveball more frequently.

One inning into his fourth regular season start, Morton suffered a season-ending left hamstring injury. So, while the idea was created in Philadelphia, the utilization of using the curveball far more often didn’t actually begin until Morton joined the Astros in 2017.

But the change was gradual, as his curveball usage went from the lower 20% to upper 20% during those two years with Houston. The real change wasn’t realized until he joined the Rays in 2019 and increased that usage to 37.4%. He posted a 3.05 ERA and finished third in American League Cy Young Award balloting that year.

The curveball has remained his primary pitch in every season that followed.

“Those teams are out there, where they have so much confidence in their ability to identify or recognize the value of one of those pitches, where they’ll put you in there and tell you they don’t care if you throw it 30, 40 or 50% of the time,” Morton said.

The Braves are certainly among those teams. They saw the potential value as Morton posted a 3.64 ERA while using the curveball 43.2% of the time last year. His success led them to exercise his $20 million option for this season.

Morton can still lean on his fastball, changeup and cutter whenever necessary. But he finds himself thankful to have stuck around long enough to be part of an era during which his best pitch no longer had to be a secondary pitch.

“I was fortunate to be in a stage in baseball where we started to transition to where it was okay to throw breaking balls behind in the count or bases-loaded breaking balls, even behind in the count,” Morton said. “The mentality before was if you can’t pitch off your fastball, you can’t pitch in the big leagues.

“For a long time there, I wasn’t throwing many breaking balls. So, I do wonder what could have been.”