When over a quarter of the pitches you've thrown in your career are curveballs, you've probably learned how to generate a whole lot of spin — with or without the infamous "sticky stuff" that is no longer allowed.
So while other pitchers may be struggling to rotate the ball as much without some tack, or whatever foreign substance they used, veteran Charlie Morton is having no such issue. The 37-year-old has gone 5-2 with a 3.22 ERA and 81 strikeouts in 64.1 innings of work in the months of July and August, with the crackdown having started at the end of June. Prior to that point, Morton was 7-3 with a 3.68 ERA and 93 strikeouts in 80.2 innings pitched, and so the crackdown actually seemed to be a point at which his numbers improved.
This likely isn't a cause-and-effect statistic — it's probably just a coincidence and the normal ebb and flow of a pitcher's success throughout the season — but the fact that he sits atop a league-wide spin rate leaderboard certainly isn't a coincidence.
First of all... those pitch overlays. Wow. I mean, come on.
And second... three times more of those 3,000-plus RPM pitches than the next three guys combined? What other leaderboards are there in baseball where the guy at No. 1 has three times more than Nos. 2, 3 and 4. There definitely aren't too many, and though this isn't your typical MLB "leaderboard," it's a notable statistic nonetheless.
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