Morris Down, But Not Out

They often say bad things come in threes.

That was the case for High-A left-handed starting pitching Ryan Morris as he went through a season this year that had a lot of strange injuries and incidents before recently being shut down for the year because of a shoulder injury.

A 4th round pick by the Indians in the 2006 Draft out of high school, Morris had been progressing nicely through the system and made it to advanced Single-A this season at age 21. He was coming off a solid campaign at Low-A Lake County in 2008 where he was 9-7 with a 3.76 ERA in 27 starts (134.0 IP, 116 H, 57 BB, 101 K).

But ever since the season started this year at Kinston, things were never right and never seemed to go his way. His first half performance was not very good as he was 3-7 with a 5.60 ERA in 13 starts. Once his performance had started to dramatically trend very positively, he sustained several different injuries within weeks of each other which put an abrupt end to his season.

The big injury was to his shoulder, an injury that came about in his last start, ironically his best start of the season and arguably in his professional career. On July 5th he went seven very strong shutout innings allowing just three hits, two walks, and had seven strikeouts. It was a start that had piggybacked other recent very good outings, and it looked like he was back on track.

However, while he was throwing a gem that game, he was also hurting.