You just have to be better at using the same skills that let you get minor league hitters out.

It takes BETTER pitches to get the major leaguers out.

Otherwise, AAA pitching stats would translate directly to major league stats, with adjustments only for park and not for league level.

Thank God Morrow’s been added to the list of starters. I understand the impulse to give up on the team, not attend games, etc., but this is exactly the reason that impulse doesn’t work for me. There are a few Mariners who are capable of giving you a gem of an evening.

I’m not saying I’d recommend this to everyone, but it’s at least worth thinking about, particularly given Morrow’s struggles with control early in his career, whether the M’s didn’t in fact handle this correctly.

The most dominating thing I thought about Morrow was his ability to minimize his pitch count, thus actually get to the eighth inning. With how patient the Yankees are, I thought that was the most important part of the game.

Also, how many 1st pitch swing and misses did he get. Its seemed to be outrageously high, which means he was fooling a ton of people with those first pitch curveballs.

So I’ll drop some choice quotes from the NYTimes

Morrow’s fastball hummed all night, and the Yankees looked completely overmatched. In the seventh, Morrow struck out Alex Rodriguez on three pitches — a curveball (swinging), an inside fastball (looking) and another inside fastball, at 95 m.p.h., for a swinging third strike.

“I guess he’s throwing like he threw when he was in the bullpen — he’s just doing it for a longer period of time,” Jeter said. “He’s throwing 97, an overpowering fastball, and as the game went on, he started mixing in more breaking balls and off-speed stuff. He was coming after us.”
…
“His stuff was electric,” Yankees Manager Joe Girardi said. “You talk about trying to be patient with a guy, but he was strike, strike, strike with all his pitches. We were 0-1 all night.”

Even so, Morrow’s pitch count was a problem for Mariners Manager Jim Riggleman. Morrow’s high in the minors was 82 pitches over six innings last Sunday, and he was scheduled to throw no more than 90 this time. By the eighth, Morrow was tiring.

“My arm felt good, but physically, I was exhausted,” he said. “If I got through that eighth, Riggleman was going to have a tough decision. I think he would have given me a shot to finish it.”

Riggleman said he was leaning that way, but acknowledged it would have been a tough decision. Still, he said, “I wish we’d been in position to make that call.”

Morrow’s effort was remarkable enough as it was. The last pitcher to carry a no-hitter deeper into a game in his first major league start was Boston’s Billy Rohr, who lost a no-hitter with two outs in the ninth inning at Yankee Stadium on April 14, 1967. Elston Howard spoiled that bid with a single.

For a variety of stupid reasons I spent most of the game driving up and down the Viaduct listening to the radio. It was the first time in a while that I wished I was inside the stadium just a few feet away….