Why Charlie is Better than this...

Anthony strongly criticized Charlie Morton below. Obviously, this is a very easy thing to do right now. Of course, he didn't look deep into the stats (as usual). As bad as his numbers are right now, there are some definite reasons to be optimistic about Morton turning it around over the long haul.

Here are some of the oddities in Morton's 2010 stats after eight starts (courtesy of Fangraphs):

-Morton's left on Base percent (or strand rate) is 43.8%. The Major League Average is 71.5%. The worst number from a pitcher in 2009 that pitched at least 100 innings was 59%. In 2009, he was right in the middle of the league at 71.4%. Last night, Morton allowed 7 baserunners and 6 scored. These numbers are just impossible to maintain. Especially considering....

-His strikeouts are up and his walks down. He is striking out a very good 7.64 batters per 9 innings in 2010 compared to 5.75 in 2009. The walks are down over 1 per 9 innings as well (3.71 to 2.55). So, less balls are being put in play. That is always a good thing.

-His HR per flyball rate is 20.5%. Typically all pitchers, even the most dominant or most hittable ones, linger around 10%.

-Morton's Batting Average on Balls in play is .387. Again, this is way above the major league average of about .300. Morton's last year was .310 and .304 with the Braves.

There are plenty more stats that skew towards the unlucky for Charlie. I think you get the point though. It is almost impossible for him to keep these bad numbers up the way he is actually pitching. Its much more likely things will start to even out and his numbers the rest of the way are more in line with what we expected.

As for Anthony's boy Nate McLouth and that trade in general? Guys who (on a good team) are 4th or 5th outfielders themselves tend to bring back high risk, high reward guys like Morton and Hernandez (Locke is much more than a "questionable" prospect but some other time..). His contract was only team friendly if he kept hitting like he had in the first two months of 2008 when he would have been worth the money. He has not come close to doing that (with either team). Sure, he has had some unluckiness of his own in 2010 as his BABIP is a bit low, but he is also striking out more than ever (by a lot) with a drastic decrease in power. That is a terrible combination. Its very possible Nate peaked in those first two months of 2008.

Oh, that gold glove McLouth won? Its routinely viewed as one of the bigger jokes in Gold Glove voting history. Here is a post right after it happened by the author of a Pirates blog.

Most sane people view this trade as Huntington selling as high as he possibly could on a nice but not franchise changing player. Anthony will eventually get there with the rest of us.