The Tampa Bay Rays told Charlie Morton it would happen. When they chased him as a free agent before last season, their front office did not present to him this precise scenario — an unprecedented path to the World Series, with him leading the way — but they shared their methodology. Part of Morton recoiled at the message.
“‘Hey, we don’t need you to go seven, eight innings — we’re built so that you give us five or six good ones and we’ll take care of the rest,’” Morton, 36, said earlier this month, recalling the Rays’ pitch to him. “I don’t know how I feel about that; coming up, you want to go seven, eight. You want that complete game.”
Morton’s role models as a young major leaguer were other tall right-handers who craved big moments and burned to work deep into games: Roy Halladay, Chris Carpenter, Adam Wainwright and A.J. Burnett. His generation of pitchers, Morton said, is probably the last to be raised with that mentality.