The Bright Spot in an Awful Season

Last July 8, the Los Angeles Angels held a scant 2½-game lead in the American League West over a hot Mariners team in the middle of a four-game winning streak. Across the country, the Yankees had just hammered the Angels 12–0, providing the Mariners an opportunity to gain further ground in their quest for a division title as they squared off against the Oakland Athletics.

In the top of the seventh inning, M's left fielder Raul Ibanez came to the plate with the bases loaded. Ibanez slapped a double into the right-center field gap, sending all three runners racing for home. Jason Ellison, the M's scrappy backup outfielder, scored easily, as did Ichiro Suzuki. But as Jose Lopez touched home, a relay throw hit him in the back and rolled to the feet of Ichiro, still standing near the plate. Oakland pitcher Joe Blanton was backing up the play, and in his scramble for the ball, Blanton pushed Ichiro out of the way—probably a little harder than necessary. Ellison, waiting to slap five with Ichiro, saw the whole thing go down. Although he gives up about 70 pounds and six inches to Blanton, Ellison stepped up to the pitcher and threw up his dukes. Both benches cleared.

From the bullpen, 22-year-old Brandon Morrow barreled towards the fracas with the rest of the M's relievers, but he didn't quite make it. Bullpen coach Jim Slaton physically restrained Morrow as the normally unassuming kid from the Bay Area tried to push his way into the fray.

Then Slaton saw Felix Hernandez, the M's young ace from Venezuela, jawing with the A's and approaching the pile. Slaton wanted to protect both pitchers from injury, but he had a decision to make: Who's more valuable, Hernandez or Morrow? Slaton answered that question by abandoning Morrow and throwing his arms around Hernandez. Morrow nevertheless stayed out of the melee.

Fast forward to July 2 of this year: Hernandez is on the 15-day disabled list with a sprained ankle after a collision at home plate against the New York Mets a week earlier. The Mariners are in the cellar, 17½ games behind the division-leading Angels in a season that everyone agrees has been a disaster. The M's are playing the rubber of a three-game series against the Toronto Blue Jays, a midseason contest between two teams who have both lost more games than they've won (Toronto has since improved to .500, but is still far out of first place in the American League East). The fans are content to enjoy a beautiful summer evening at Safeco Field, cheering loudest not for the Mariners but during the digital hydroplane race on the center-field scoreboard.

In the ninth inning, the M's are up 4–2. The door to the bullpen swings open and Morrow jogs out. With J.J. Putz joining Hernandez on the disabled list with sore ribs, Morrow is the de facto M's closer, with a bitchin' '80s metal theme song, Guns N' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle," to prove it. Reaching the pitcher's mound, Morrow fires seven warm-up pitches in the same sequence he employs before every outing: a fastball, another fastball, a changeup, a slider, another slider, and two more fastballs.

Morrow doesn't have his best stuff tonight—he's leaving his pitches high over the plate—but it doesn't matter. Scott Rolen, Toronto's third baseman, flies out to Ichiro in right field. Catcher Rod Barajas then lines out to Lopez at second base. Now the fans are on their feet, and there's one out between Morrow and an M's victory. He fires a fastball to Toronto's first baseman, Lyle Overbay, who lets it slide through the inside corner for a called strike. Morrow's next pitch is a changeup, high and outside for a ball. Then he uncorks a 97-mph fastball. Overbay swings and lines it to deep left field, into Ibanez' waiting glove. Game over. This marks Morrow's fifth save in as many opportunities, a rare sunbreak in an otherwise dreary season.

At the time of that save, Morrow's stats were as close to flawless as a pitcher's can get: He'd pitched 25¹³ innings, yielding but eight walks, 13 hits, and two earned runs, the most recent of which was more than a month earlier. He also had 32 strikeouts to go with a staggeringly low earned-run average of 0.71. Slaton was fired at the end of the 2007 season, but if he had to choose again which player to hold back from a scuffle, Morrow or Hernandez, you can bet the decision would be a lot harder.

But wait—didn't Morrow start during his final year at the University of California? Didn't the Mariners draft him as a starter? What was the organization doing throwing its best young pitching prospect into the bullpen? If the M's were in contention, they might keep the skinny right-handed flamethrower in the role he filled before Putz was hurt: that of eighth-inning setup man. But when a team has won only a third of its games, there aren't a whole lot of wins to set up. Hence, management recently decided—belatedly, some would argue—to make Morrow part of the starting rotation, sending him to Class AAA Tacoma, where he will gradually raise his pitch count without having to worry about Alex Rodriguez swatting a fourth-inning fastball over the fence.