Charlie Morton . . . a winner?!?

I am not yet ready to start liking Charlie Morton, but after today's complete game against the 1st place Reds, I am ready to stop being pessimistic about everyone of his starts. I have seen enough to say now that Charlie Morton is a transformed pitcher. His strike outs are low (and I hope they go up some), but he is consistently getting ground balls. Except for one mistake pitch in 9th that was blasted out of the ball park, Morton was great. 5 hits. 2 walks. 1 error. That is all the Reds could muster.

The Pirates got out early thanks to a long ball by Jones. Snyder followed in the next inning with an RBI single. Welcome back Snyder. Walker hit a 2 run homer in the following inning and the Pirates would get another later. The offense looked good except for McCutchen who went 0 for 5 with 4 strikeouts. No kidding. Tabata tore the ball up and even Alvarez got a hit.

The lead allowed Morton to pound the strike zone. The 8th inning was a picture of the whole night. Morton had to face the top of the order. He struck out Stubbs on three straight pitches (one of only 2 Ks on the night). The next Red took only two pitches to get him to ground out. Then Joey Votto saw three pitches before he grounded out. 8 pitches, 3 outs. No balls the whole inning. In fact, Morton threw about 110 pitches and less than 30 balls. Pretty good.

The Minor League guys got swept. Some okay news in there though. Brad Lincoln pitched okay. He had one trouble spot where he gave up a homer, struck the next guy out, and then gave up three doubles in a row before getting out of the inning. 3 runs in five innings. No matter what it appears the old Brad Lincoln is back. His inability to get strikeouts appears to be gone. Whatever they messed up last year seems to be fixed again. Indy lost 0-3.

Zack Dodson had a similar night. He had one bad inning. Gave up 4 runs in 4 innings, but all his runs were together and an error added to that problem. He was unable to pitch around it. Brooks Pounders came in for the fifth inning and gave up a quick run, but had an easy 6th and 7th showing ground ball and strike out ability. Pounders just might be a good bullpen option in the future. The other good news coming out of West Virginia was a multi-hit night for Mel Rojas Jr. He had done nothing all year, but showed up tonight. Swiped a bag as well.

No real good news in Bradenton, and Altoona saw a few scattered hits from Mercer and Sanchez. Nothing to get real excited about as both teams lost.

P.S. Joe Biemel is back and they sent down Garret Olsen to make room. Glad to see Biemel, but surprised by sending down Olsen. He had pitched well and I thought they might send down Daniel McCutchen, or perhaps even Crotta. McCutchen was going to be in the rotation in Indy and Biemel would have allowed him to get back to that. When Ohlendorf returns they could have sent Olsen down then. I guess Clint thinks he can do just fine with only one lefty in the pen.