Krukow on Morris this Morning on KNBR

I recommend listening to Krukow's show on the Murph and Mac show on KNBR (just click on Krukow photo before his next show on Monday), he actually talked extensively about Morris and what his thoughts were about Morris' struggles this year. As Murph noted, this punches a hole in the "homer" image that people have of Krukow.

For those who don't want to listen, here's what I remember. Basically Krukow thinks that Morris have been pitching every game like it's the 7th game of the World Series because he wanted to justify his big contract. And he's dog tired now.

This is something I've been noting about Morris all season long, about how he might be over-amped for the games. But he is suppose to be a pro's pro and not prone to this type of jitters.

He also mentioned what Lefty noted in a recent post, that he's going with his breaking ball constantly now, showing no confidence at all with his fastball. He talked about what Morris needs to do to be successful now (pitch in and out, location) vs. his past when he had a fastball with a great "second stage", a stage that is lacking now. He noted that Morris at this point in the season has no "second stage" on his fastball and this is when vets like Morris should be doing great, it is youngsters like Sanchez that one would expect to do poorly, because of inexperience.

Kruk thinks that Morris will be better next year because it will be more comfortable for him. This is his first time he has changed teams so everything was unfamiliar, but next year he will have some continuity that will help him not be so fired up each time he pitched. It will help him to calm down.

Again, we paid him all that money to avoid a problem like this. Or maybe he mentally pitched down to the $5M we paid him this season. Either way, this is not something we were sold on about him when he signed on with us. But, in any case, that's our only hope to salvage anything from this contract, it will be pretty ugly if he pitches like this the next two seasons at $9.5M per.

Kruk also noted that Morris is not an ace or #2 anymore, at this stage of his career, he's an good innings eater with a lot to offer to his younger teammates. That was the opinion of most Giants bloggers when Morris signed, he would be the #2 on the staff but not a true #2; I was hoping Lowry or Cain would take that mantle, performance-wise, during the season but neither fully embraced it yet, though Cain looked like he was until this last start.

However, we expected a lot more than he has delivered so far. He was OK as of probably sometime in August, but then went south. Had he continued pitching well or at least not this bomb-tastic since then, his worth would not be in question, I think, but, obviously, he didn't and it is. I mean, really, I understand losing to St. Louis, but Milwaukee, losers of a lot of games this season and this month?

So that is definitely not a homer description of Morris, it seemed like a very objective description of where Morris is right now, warts and all, with a ray of sunshine for next season. So now we just have to hope that Krukow is right.