Infinitive Splitter

The Associated Press dropped this piece on Saturday, perhaps thinking no one would notice.

Despite big salary, RHP Matt Morris thinks he fits in with Pirates

He may be correct, but only because he’s bad at baseball, like most of his teammates.

Matt Morris is, in many ways, exactly the type of pitcher the Pittsburgh Pirates need.

This is untrue in two important ways. Way one: the Pirates need a good pitcher, and he is not a good pitcher. Way two: the Pirates need to make smart deals in order to meet tight, self-imposed payroll priorities, and Matt Morris took $10 million last season (more than any player in Pirates history!) to allow a run in two out of every three innings.

He’s a dependable starter with a quality pedigree who welcomes the opportunity to mentor a young staff.

He is dependable in the sense that charts of his performance follow dependable, downward slopes.

At the same time, he seems to understand that his status is tenuous at best because of his $9.5 million salary, roughly 20 percent of the team’s $50 million payroll.

Morris’ position isn’t tenuous because he makes that much money. It’s tenuous because he makes that much money and he isn’t a very good pitcher.

The Pirates’ new management tried to trade him this offseason and undoubtedly will continue to do so.

Note that the “new management” — General Manager Neal Huntington — was necessary because the old management did things like give Matt Morris $10 million. The trade to acquire Morris was the last personnel decision the old management — Dave Littlefield — ever made.

Morris understands that raising his value for his pending free agency — he can be eligible after the coming season if a $9 million club option is bought out — might be easier elsewhere. The Pirates have had 15 consecutive losing seasons and made few roster moves this winter.

“It’s obviously harder on a team that’s not as experienced,” Morris said. “To come over here and try to raise your stock is not a good move, but it’s still baseball, it’s still competing, and it seems like the organization is going in the right direction. I’m happy to be a part of it.”

It’s hard to get a lot of wins on a team that only scores 4.4 runs per game (12th out of 16 National League teams last year), so Morris’ 3-4 record in 11 starts doesn’t mean much. But in 62 innings last year, he allowed 42 earned runs and posted a 1.61 WHIP.

Morris’ ERA+ for the part of the 2007 he spent with the Pirates was 71, which means he was 71 percent as good as the average Major League pitcher. The Pirates won 68 games last year, which is 84 percent as good as the average Major League team. Maybe he’d fit in better somewhere else.