Brandon Morrow hesitated when asked the last time he’d thrown a complete-game shutout.
“College,” he said, and then paused. “Well, I probably did. I know the last time I threw nine was in college.”
He can mark Friday as the date of his first professional shutout.
Morrow was everything the Seattle Mariners hoped he would become when they made the decision to send him back to the Rainiers. He was efficient, he used his off-speed pitches and he was confident, throwing nine scoreless innings in Tacoma’s 4-0 win over the Iowa Cubs at Cheney Stadium.
In those nine innings, Morrow allowed just four hits, striking out two and walking one, and needed only 96 pitches.
“It’s what we’re looking for from him,” Rainiers manager Daren Brown said. “I thought he was under control the whole night. It was just a solid performance.”
Morrow said it came on a night when he didn’t feel he had his electrifying fastball.
“I don’t think I had my best stuff,” Morrow said. “I probably had my best stuff in Texas against Round Rock.”
Most of the night, Morrow’s fastball sat around 91-93 mph. His best pitch was the change-up that he tortured the Cubs’ six left-handed hitters and one switch-hitter with all night as it ran away to the outside corner of the plate.
“It’s got good action when I throw it good,” Morrow said. “I threw it a lot.”
It was so effective, he only threw five breaking balls all night – one curveball and four sliders.
“His fastball command was unbelievable, and the change-up, that thing was running like a two-seamer away from lefties at 87-88 mph,” catcher Adam Moore said.
As a result, Iowa hitters never really squared up on any pitches. Of the four hits, two were hit solidly. Morrow had six innings where he threw fewer than 10 pitches, including a five-pitch sixth inning.
With Morrow putting up zeroes, Matt Tuiasosopo’s laser of a solo home run in the first inning would have been enough for Tacoma. But Bryan LaHair added a two-run homer – his 24th of the season – in the fourth, and Chris Shelton an RBI single in the fifth.
The Mariners want Morrow to be a pitcher, not a thrower. And they believe his secondary pitches – curveball, slider and change-up – are big-league quality.
“Everything he’s got is a plus-pitch,” Brown said. “It’s easy for people to get excited about watching the radar gun. But his other pitches are plus-pitches and he’s going to have to use them to get outs at the big-league level, and he did that tonight.”
Moore seemed more excited about catching a shutout than his laid-back pitcher did about throwing one.
“The way he threw tonight, it’s been a long time since I’ve caught somebody with that much confidence in the fastball and change-up,” Moore said.
But Morrow knows this is a process. Over his last three starts, he has allowed just three runs in 22 innings, and there’s a reason for the success.
“My first two starts I struggled,” he said “I was thinking about trying to be a control pitcher and this and that. But before my third start, I told myself I’m just going to be as aggressive as possible. And I’ve taken that approach this last three times and it helped.”
On tap
Left-hander Chris Seddon (7-6, 4.12 ERA) will start for the Rainiers, while Iowa counters with lefty J.R. Mathes (10-6, 3.60) at 7 p.m. on 850-AM.
Ryan Divish: 253-597-8483
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