PHILADELPHIA -- Trailing Philadelphia 2-1 in the best-of-five National League Division Series, the Braves are confident that Charlie Morton will keep them in the series when he takes the mound in Saturday’s pivotal Game 4.
Morton said he began preparing days ago to pitch either game 3 or 4 at Citizens Bank Park.
Morton, who recently signed a $20 million contract for the 2023 season, found out from manager Brian Snitker on Friday that he would be pitching Game 4 because Spencer Strider was selected for Game 3. Strider took the loss in Game 3, lasting only 2-1/3 innings and giving up five earned runs in a 9-1 loss.
Morton’s preparation included throwing a bullpen session and beginning to scout the Phillies hitters several days ago.
“You’ve got to be ready to throw when they call,” he said.
Snitker said Strider was selected over Morton for Game 3 because the bullpen needed to pitch only three innings Wednesday in the 3-0 Game 2 victory.
Morton said he couldn’t remember his most recent start. There may be a reason why. It came Sept. 25 at Philadelphia. He gave up six runs, all earned, in 4-1/3 innings pitched. The poor performance is part of a larger story of a lack of success against the Phillies this season, as well as a lack of quality late this season.
In five starts against Philadelphia, Morton is 0-1 with a 5.47 ERA with 11 walks and 26 strikeouts. He’s 5-6 in his career against Philadelphia with a 4.81 ERA.
Morton hasn’t produced a quality start since Aug. 21 when he limited the Astros to two earned runs in six innings. HIs ERA has climbed from 3.99 to 4.34 ERA in seven starts since that game against Houston at Truist Park. Morton is 9-6 with a 4.34 ERA this season.
But Morton is known as a big-game pitcher, going 7-2 with a 3.35 ERA in the playoffs for the Astros, Rays and Braves since 2017.
“I‘ve been on the other side of Postseason Chuck before, so I know what that’s like,” Braves first baseman Matt Olson said. “We feel good about having those two guys going. Obviously not the position we want to be in here, but we’ve won back-to-back games a lot during the season, so we’ve just got to come out, get that win tomorrow and try to get back home for Game 5.”
Morton said the Phillies have taken different approaches against him this season. He said they’ve worked on trying to put the ball in play and going the other way, which was similar to what they did in Game 1 against Max Fried. The Phillies had an on-base average of .301 against Morton with 31 hits in 26-1/3 innings pitched this season.
“I think that’s kind of a tough approach that the team has to pitch against because they’re really seeming to stay inside of themselves,” he said. “We’ll talk about the game plan and go from there.”
Morton credited his season in Philadelphia in 2016 with rejuvenating his career because that’s when he was coached to throw his curveball more. Morton said he was shown that batters were hitting less than .200 against his curveball, but he was throwing it around 10% of the time. He began mixing it in more with the cutter and four-seam fastball, tossing the curveball as much as 38% of his pitches in 2022, compared with a low of 10.7% when he debuted with the Braves in 2008, according to FanGraphs. He subsequently began to set career-highs for wins (16) and strikeouts (240) with Tampa in 2019.
“That was that was kind of the beginning of me becoming more of a curveball, if not a curveball pitcher,” he said.
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