The Marlins have reinstated righty Bryan Morris from the 60-day DL and designated him for assignment, per a team announcement. The 29-year-old has missed most of the year after undergoing back surgery.
Evidently, Miami decided that it would not be bringing Morris back for 2017, when he is arbitration eligible for the second time. He would have been seeking a minor raise on a reasonable $1.35MM salary this year.
Morris has done nothing but produce results at the major league level, with a 2.80 ERA over 215 career innings in the past five campaigns. And he not only has the big, mid-nineties fastball that one might associate with relief dominance, but typically generates grounders on about three of five balls put in play against him.
Look deeper, though, and the record is less impressive. Morris suffered a velocity drop this year, fell into single digits in swinging strike rate for the first time, and also lost some grounders over his 17 2/3 frames. He has never had a particularly impressive strikeout-to-walk ratio, and this season’s marks (6.6 K/9 against 5.1 BB/9) were worse than ever.
It’ll be interesting to see where Morris lands and how his career progresses from here. ERA estimators have never bought into his results, but he has succeeded over a rather lengthy span.
Come on back to Pittsburgh
Wow. Even if he is trending downwards, 17 innings shouldn’t be enough to evaluate that off of. He seems like a good fit for a team like Oakland or Milwaukee who could gamble his strikeout numbers will increase and have a long term setup man or good trade piece down the road
I would bet he clears due to the money but is signed soon