Slugger thrives at plate since LaRoche’s injury
Michael Morse struggled to take advantage of his first opportunity at a full-time job with the Nationals this season. Given a second chance at a new position, he is making it difficult to keep him off the field.
Morse took over at first base once starter Adam LaRoche finally succumbed to a left shoulder injury May 21. There wasn’t really another option available to Washington even though Morse had started just 12 games there in his career. Coincidence or not, the 29-year-old’s bat immediately took off, and he hasn’t missed a game since.
Morse entered play Wednesday batting .302 with nine home runs and 33 RBI in 2011. He was on fire during spring training, but once the Nats moved north for the regular season, he seemed lost at the plate, with the pressure of securing serious playing time in left field hard to shake. Morse was 4-for-30 to begin the year and managed just two extra-base hits with 21 strikeouts by the end of April. What was wrong?
“If I knew I would tell you,” Morse said after his slump finally broke. “But baseball has a long season.”
Something had to give. Morse started just three of Washington’s first 14 games in May and in six of those contests didn’t play at all. It looked like an opportunity lost. But then LaRoche went on the disabled list, and the Nats turned back to Morse. Since then he has seven home runs and six doubles with 22 RBI. Go back to May 1 and no one with at least 85 plate appearances has a higher batting average (.374).
“We’ve all seen this from Mike. We saw it last year. We saw it in spring training,” Washington manager Jim Riggleman said. “It got away from him a little bit for whatever reason, and now he’s just playing baseball, not necessarily trying to hold on to a position.”
There have long been hints Morse is capable of such production. He was a third-round pick in 2000 and became one of Seattle’s top prospects. But a knee injury in 2006 ended that campaign early. Worse, after a torrid spring training in 2008 a torn labrum in his left shoulder ended that season after just five games.
The sample size is still small, of course. Morse has holes in his swing with just nine walks and 42 strikeouts in 2011. But include his part-time role last season and Morse has 428 at-bats to his name over the last 14 months. During that span he has an .870 OPS, ranking 23rd among big leaguers with at least 470 plate appearances. His slugging percentage of .521 ranks 18th, and he’s also hit 24 homers.
“I go up to the plate, and I try to get a good pitch to hit. I try to square up the ball,” Morse said. “Sometimes you make outs. But sometimes it finds a hole somewhere. It’s a mentality. I try to keep it as simple as possible. But it took me a long time to understand that.”
