Charlie's new (old) trick, platoon patterns, and other things I'm watching
Injuries have forced the Braves to use their bench more, and it's raised some interesting questions.
Here are some under-the-radar storylines that I’ve been keeping an eye on recently.
Is Charlie Morton finally acting his age?
An aging star pitcher no longer racks up whiffs as he used to, so he starts doing things differently, relies more on finesse and guile, and recaptures a bit of success in the process. It’s how Zack Greinke was moderately effective for a bit even after he lost his strikeout stuff, and it’s what Justin Verlander has done over the last few years. It’s a tale as old as time - that is, a tale only slightly older than Charlie Morton himself.
But Morton is different. How many starting pitchers can you think of who started their careers as ground-ball-generating sinkerballers with modest velocity, then morphed into high-wire-act strikeout machines from their age-33 to age-39 seasons? Imagine Bryce Elder maintaining his current form for 5 more years, then experiencing a 7-year peak in his mid-thirties where he’s suddenly averaging 95 mph with his fastball, and you get a sense of Morton’s career arc.
Morton was quietly elite for the Braves in 2021, providing elite strikeout, barrel, and ground ball rates while walking hitters at a roughly average rate. Things unraveled in the next two seasons, with walks rising and contact quality increasing. The strikeouts were still there, but if a hitter put the ball in play, things got ugly.
So imagine my surprise when, through five starts in 2024, Charlie Morton is doing . . . kind of the opposite of that.
This is good, but it’s hard to square with the Charlie Morton of recent years. He’s struggling to get whiffs but quite effectively limiting hard contact. His .332 xwOBACON (that’s xwOBA, but only considering contact - so no credit for strikeouts and no penalty for walks) would be the best he’s posted since the start of the Statcast era in 2015.
A look at his individual pitches is similarly baffling. Morton’s curveball has been one of the game’s very best pitches for years, and it’s because he consistently gets whiffs on about 40 percent of swings against it. This year, it’s a paltry 27 percent. His whiff rates have dropped on his other pitches too, save for his seldom-used cutter. But after hitters punished Morton’s four-seamer and sinker in recent years, they’ve struggled with both in 2024. Morton has basically halved the hard-hit rate on both of those pitches.
There’s some reason for pessimism about Morton this year, particularly when Baseball Prospectus’ StuffPro model no longer loves Morton’s curveball and really doesn’t like the rest of his 2024 arsenal. And as of now, Texas is the only well-regarded offense he’s faced (maybe Cleveland, but I’m not sold yet), so it’s totally possible that these positive early results are a combination of favorable scheduling and a small sample. And Morton’s last start against the Guardians was a classic Charlie Morton strikeout affair (complete with the signature Morton HBP). But if they hold, then we might be seeing a reversal in Charlie Morton’s Benjamin Button-esque journey - the oldest pitcher in the big leagues is finally pitching like he’s a savvy old man.
Punting on platoon pinch-hitting
When the Braves acquired Adam Duvall, I assumed that even if Jarred Kelenic would sit against lefty starters, he’d face his fair share of left-handed relievers. So far, that hasn’t been true; Kelenic has faced one southpaw in his first 61 plate appearances. But there have been only two instances - on Opening Day and on an April 15 game against Houston - in which Kelenic was pulled for Duvall. So while it does seem like in the most pivotal situations, the Braves will bring Duvall in for the handedness advantage, a lot of the breakdown so far is that teams just haven’t thrown that many left-handed relievers against the Braves. On the other side of the coin, Duvall has been pulled from a start only once - in favor of Kelenic in an April 5 game against Arizona - and 14 of his 49 plate appearances have come against righties.
The wrinkle is that the Braves haven’t had their first-choice lineup since Sean Murphy went down on Opening Day. The lineup got further sub-optimized when Ozzie Albies hit the IL and was spelled by David Fletcher and Luis Guillorme.
Since Kelenic is better against lefties and Duvall is better against righties than Tromp, Fletcher, and Guillorme are against, well, anyone, the Braves mostly avoided confronting the question of whether Kelenic and Duvall should pinch-hit for each other. Of the ten pinch-hit appearances Kelenic and Duvall have had, only three were straight-up swaps. In the other seven, they were pinch-hitting for Tromp, Fletcher, or Guillorme.
With Albies back in the lineup, the Braves will have to face the platoon pinch-hit question on non-Tromp start days. And when Murphy returns, it’ll be every day. I’m curious to see what the team ends up doing. My hope is that Kelenic is handled similarly to how Duvall has been handled so far: getting the vast majority of ABs against opposite-handed hitting, but with some opportunities to hit same-handed pitchers. The upside proposition with Kelenic is significant, but he needs some leash if he’s going to continue the progress he made last year against lefties.
Smith-Shawver and Dodd pitch . . . intriguingly
MLB doesn’t market it well (or virtually at all), but Statcast data is available for all Triple-A games. That means that rather than relying on broadcast guns (if you can be bothered to watch a Gwinnett Stripers game), we have precise pitch-by-pitch data for every Stripers hurler.
Last week, Gwinnett faced a dangerous Norfolk Tides lineup, a group that serves as a reminder of how deep Baltimore’s position-player crop runs. Both AJ Smith-Shawver and Dylan Dodd had to face a top three of Connor Norby, Coby Mayo, and Kyle Stowers, and the latter also had to face Ryan McKenna (who’s now back in the bigs with Jackson Holliday’s demotion).
Smith-Shawver’s day was a mixed bag. The line isn’t pretty; he walked three hitters, hit a fourth (all in one inning!) and allowed a pair of homers. His fastball started parked in the 97-99 range and dipped down into the low 90s by the end of his five-inning start. Command remains a major question for Smith-Shawver. But the stuff is very good. Baseball Prospectus' StuffPro model (the same one that’s bearish on Morton) thinks Smith-Shawver has three, maybe even four above-average pitches. Sure enough, he earned a ludicrous 17 whiffs on 35 swings for the day. It’ll take patience, but early in his age-21 season, Smith-Shawver is at least a lot of fun to keep an eye on.
Dodd was good by any measure and maybe had the best start at any level of his young career. Over seven innings of one-run ball, Dodd struck out seven hitters, walked one, and allowed just three hits (one of which was an extremely cheap, 91.7 mph EV home run to lead off the game.) The most encouraging sign might have been his fastball velocity: Dodd averaged 93.3 mph on the day (compare to 92.1 mph in his big-league stint last year), and while it’ll probably never be a plus pitch, he’s got a much better chance of surviving mistakes the harder he can throw the pitch without totally losing command.
The Braves should be conservative about bringing Smith-Shawver up; hopefully, they’ve taken the Kyle Wright Gwinnett Shuttle Experience as a reminder that young pitchers are people too, and the more routine Smith-Shawver can build, the better. On the other hand, Dodd is probably in the Bryce Elder/Darius Vines tier of pitchers who could be needed at any given minute. At least for one glorious afternoon against Norfolk, he looked like someone who could be a real asset in the big leagues this year.
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Thank you for the article 🙏