Mound Talk

Small sample sizes be damned, Franklin Morales is stinking up the joint through five starts in 2008. Morales entered the season as the Rockies top prospect by Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, John Sickels & Mound Talk. Only Project Prospect went in a different dirrection (Ian Stewart). Morales was rated #8 by Baseball America on their Top 100 Prospect List. He came in at 13 on Baseball Prospectus, 8 on Keith Law’s list. He came in at 26 on my list & 25 for Project Prospect. With Morales struggling this year, I have received several emails asking about him as a prospect.

Morales is a 6-foot-0 lefty with a fastball, curveball & changeup. He relies heavily on the fastball and will throw it a few different ways. He works in the mid-90s with his fastball and is very tough on left-handed hitters. He has struggled with his control a bit and from what I’ve gathered seeing him in the minors twice & for the Rockies last season a number of times is that is often related to how precise his control is with the fastball. He has a tendency to struggle locating the fastball and in those outings he’ll struggle to locate anything and be very inconsistent with the curveball. However, when he does locate the fastball everything else seems to fall into place. Though he will still struggle with consistency on the curveball, he’s still a very effective pitcher.

I noted in my Rockies Top 10 Prospects, that Morales is likely to be a good #2. My reason for concern was that I thought he used his fastball too much and didn’t have a great curveball. The reason for optimism amongst BA, BP, Keith Law & others is the potential a 95 mph lefty has. Looking at his Pitch f/x data from last season, Morales had an average fastball speed of 94 mph last season. Going over the Gameday data available on MLB team websites, Morales appears to be working in the 89-91 range predominantly. What’s more is that the break seems to be less severe.

Scanning over all five of his games this season, the biggest thing that sticks out is that hitters are typically passing on his fastball. He is roughly throwing a fastball on 80% of his pitches yet opposing batters are only swinging at roughly 30% of his fastballs. Last year with Colorado, Morales threw 70% fastballs but had opposing batters swinging at 46% of the fastballs. In other words, Morales is relying more heavily on his fastball which has lost a good amount of velocity. The loss of approximately 4 mph from the left side is very significant. But hitters haven’t been feasting on the fastball this year. Instead, they are passing in favor of his changeup & curveball.

Hitters are seemingly figuring out how to handle Morales by waiting on his secondary offerings and taking more fastballs. He’s throwing more balls this year than last year, indicating a problem with his control. It’s quite obvious when looking at his walk rate (8.5% last year against 14.1% this year), his strikeout rate (16% against 7.5%) and his home run rate (1.2% against 1.6%) that control and command are an issue. Natuarally, his fantasy stats have followed. He isn’t winning games, he has a high ERA & WHIP and of course, isn’t fanning anyone.

I’m interested to see how Morales pitches in his next affair. I will certainly be tuned in for MLB’s Gamecast & charting the velocity on his fastball, frequency that he throws it & how often he is getting batters to swing on the fastball. Until he does each of those things, Morales is going to continue to be ineffective. Moreover, this is a new problem for him. It’s not that he was necessarily misjudged as a prospect by the industry. It’s that three observable changes happened entering this year that have caused his decline.