This is, quite possibly, the coolest thing ever! I can't imagine how long this took and it's really sweet. If you didn't already see it on Deadspin, check it out! Plus...the guy who does the blog is named Conor!

The M's bats have gone ice cold over the past few games.

Hits per game for the first four games: 11.5

Hits per game for the last three games: 2.66

Brandon Morrow is the staff ace for the University of California Golden Bears. The 6’3” righty has electric stuff, including a fastball that sits in the upper 90s and his knockout pitch – a splitter that could burrow into the ground. During his first two years at Cal, Morrow’s numbers were pretty bad. Through 54.2 innings, Morrow had 43 strikeouts, 39 walks and an ERA of 7.57. However, his stock started to rise when he dominated the Cape Cod League – striking out 24 guys in 14.2 innings and posting an ERA of only 1.84. Morrow’s summer success has carried over into his junior year. Through April 9^th, he’s made 9 starts and has pitched 63 innings. He’s 6-0 with one complete game, 63 strikeouts, 29 walks and an ERA of 1.57. Morrow was gracious enough to answer some questions for me, via e-mail.

Brandon, first off, can you please talk about yourself a little bit? Tell everyone where you grew up, a little about your youth baseball career and what made you choose to attend California instead of signing with the Angels out of high school.

I grew up in Rohnert Park, CA, which is about 40 miles north of San Francisco in the Sonoma Valley. My youth career was pretty standard, nothing out of the ordinary, I made some all-star teams, but I was never a stand-out until later in high school. The reason I chose to attend Cal was mainly because I wasn't physically ready to play professional baseball. Looking back, I am very happy with my decision, I really enjoy it here.

You have had the opportunity to play in the Cape Cod league last summer. What was that experience like?

It was actually my second year playing in the Cape. I played for the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox both years and really enjoyed the competition out there. I had the same host family both years as well, they were wonderful. My host mom was a great cook.

Which do you prefer – starting or relieving? Why?

I really enjoy both roles but, if I had to choose, I would choose starting because I like working deep into games and I get to use more of my pitches. Closing is great though, I love coming in with the game on the line and just being able to give it all I have for an inning.

You were diagnosed with Type-1 diabetes in high school. How much did it change your routine as a player? Do you wear an insulin pump, like Jason Johnson of the Cleveland Indians?

It really hasn't changed my routine much at all. I monitor my sugar levels every inning and make sure I eat a good meal before the game, which helps me stay more level. I do wear an insulin pump, which is great. It’s very convenient and has helped me maintain healthy sugar levels quite easily.

What player have you played with or against that makes you say, "That guy is going places!"?

Andrew Miller (UNC) was impressive both years I played against him in the Cape, and Matt LaPorta (Florida), who was my teammate freshman summer, has a great attitude along with his incredible power.

On a similar note, who is the best hitter you've had to pitch against?

Definitely my teammate, outfielder Brennan Boesch. It’s always a battle between us during intersquad games. We've been roommates for three year and to see the way he has progressed as a hitter is inspiring and has helped me improve my game.

What is a specific part of your game that you are working to improve?

I’m working on being able to pace myself during the game, learning that I don't always have to throw as hard as I can or use my best stuff for every pitch. I’m also learning that location and changing speeds is going to help me more in the long run than just throwing it by guys.

How much time does your commitment to baseball take each week? How do you keep up with classes? Will you complete your American studies degree?

Baseball, of course, takes up a lot of my time, but I've managed to keep up with my classes and I believe I'm on schedule to graduate in 4 years.

What is your conditioning regimen during the season and during the off-season? What is your throwing schedule like during the week?

During the off-season I tried to put on weight mostly. I worked out hard in the weight room and ate a lot. I've always had trouble putting on weight, but what I've gained I think will help me stay healthy and work deep into games. During the season, my routing is mainly to get ready to make my start on Friday. After the game I do some cool down shoulder exercises. Then, Saturday morning, I do a recovery lift to help flush out my body followed by a heavy shoulder workout and then run for about 25 minutes. I long toss on Sundays, lift hard on Mondays, and throw my bullpen on Tuesdays. A pre-game lift on Wednesday helps me get my muscles ready to play on Friday.

What has been the most memorable moment in your baseball career?

So far, it has to be winning the Cape Cod championship my freshman year. It was a great experience and the team was really fun to play with.

THE LIGHTNING ROUND…

Who is your favorite MLB team?

Oakland Athletics

Who is your favorite baseball player?

Jason Schmidt. I especially loved watching him pitch when he was dominating in the playoffs a few years back.

If you make it to the big leagues, what hitter would you most like to pitch against?

Barry Bonds. Who wouldn't want to face the best hitter to ever play the game?

 What is your favorite movie?

“GoodFellas”

What is your favorite book?

I'm a big fan of The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons by Dan Brown.

What is your favorite band / musician?

I'm a fan of all music, but Garth Brooks is a favorite of mine.

What is your favorite food?

Lasagna

LINKS

Video I 

Video II 

Cal Bio 

BrewerFan.net Profile 

Although I’m always trying to learn more, I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know a whole lot about scouting or college prospects. I have a pretty good grasp on statistical analysis, but scouting is something that I would really like to learn more about. That being said, Eddie Degerman is a pitcher who has put up very impressive stats for the past couple seasons, goes to a very good baseball school and has a good build, but there hasn’t been a lot of hype for him. Check out this profile…

Year / School: Sr. / Rice

Bats/Throws: R/R

Height / Weight: 6’4” / 205 lbs.

*2006 stats as of 4/4/2006              

As you can see, he’s put up some great numbers. 76 strikeouts in 55 innings?  That’s awesome! He’s holding opponents to a .149 average with metal bats. Yet, I have hardly seen any mention of him on Baseball America. They did rank him as the 21^st-best college senior, but there haven’t been any features on him. Last year, Degerman was drafted in the 41^st round by the Boston Red Sox. The little tidbit I did find on BA said that “[s]couts were scared off by his unorthodox Hideo Nomo-like, straight-over-the-top arm stroke. But hitters had a tough time picking up the ball at that angle and Degerman threw three pitches from that slot, including a 90-plus sinking fastball and 12-to-6 curveball.”

However he throws the ball, he gets results, and that’s what matters. Degerman transferred to Rice from UC-Irvine, where he didn’t pitch in one game. He also doesn’t rank very highly on Boyd Nation’s college PAPs, so his arm hasn’t been abused in college. I’ll be keeping an eye on Degerman throughout the rest of the season and especially on draft day. Hopefully, by then, I won’t be the only site to write about him!

I went to the ballgame today with my mom, because she's on spring break. It was a great game and we had a blast, but here are some funny things that I overheard at the ballpark...

Two guys behind me:
Guy #1: "Did you know that when Ichiro came to America, he couldn't speak English?"
Guy #2: "So he says..."

And, later, talking about the pitchers’ numbers on the out-of-town scoreboard:

"What are those numbers by the teams? Are they pitch counts?"

Some guy in front of me, asking his friend about Kenji Johjima:
"Did we grow him or trade for him?"

A woman in front of me, when Vlad was up...
Woman: "This guy reminds me of Mike Cameron. Where's he now?"
Her husband: "I don't know."
Woman: "Gone? He was good!"

Opening Day is finally here! Life is good.

I went to the USSMariner event at Safeco Field yesterday with my dad and had a great time. Bavasi was the guest of honor and was awesome, just as he was last summer. It was cool that the entire USSM crew was able to attend and they too were a lot of fun. Jon from The Grand Salami gave me the new issue and it looks great. If you’re going to a game anytime soon, make sure to pick one up outside the stadium. You can even see a picture of me interviewing Billy Beane (sweet!). I also saw my friend Deanna and got to meet Jason Churchill from InsideThePark and the new Prospect Insider, J from Mariner Minors, and Evan from the USSM comments. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to meet “msb.” Maybe next time…

Around the news:

Hickey says Reed is ready to go, but forces me to question his knowledge by writing, "The center fielder hasn't played in a game in more than a week because of what was first believed to be a broken wrist." Geez...I didn't know Saturday was more than a week ago!

Not a good day for Hickey...in his fluff piece about how the M's "have to start well," he spelled Rafael Chaves' last name with a Z. The M's do have a difficult schedule for April, but I'm going on record as saying that they will be better than .500 on May 1st (2006).

The "Answer Guy" tells us that there will be some new grub at the Safe this year, Matt Lawton was Brett Favre's double-play partner as a youngster, the new hotel sort of blocks the view from Lookout Landing, and gives us the origin of the term 'Can of Corn.' But, "hair-styling secrets of certain M's broadcasters" are on a strict, don't-ask, don't-tell basis.

Art Thiel looks back on the good ol' days and gives us 10 years of Mariners Opening Day lineups.

Yeah, Finnigan...we know that Chaves is trying to get these guys to throw more two-seamers. Unfortunately, I have a feeling that teaching Meche a two-seamer is like putting the premium gas in your Pinto.

Finnigan also mentions that Quiroz is here, the coaches will change clothes with the players this season, he did know that Reed played on Saturday and if this doesn't make you smile, I don't know what will...

After breaking out his new high-socks look for the World Baseball Classic, Ichiro intends to stay with it this year for Seattle. He grinned and said, in perfect English, "Old school, brother."

And hey, apparently even Debbie Downer wrote piece to bring us down for the upcoming season.

And, if you missed it, Baseball Prospectus has their National League and World Series predictions up. Now, if only they would let us play Hacking Mass!

Ooh...and Matt Thornton pitched yesterday and did well. 1.1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 1 K.

And – some of you may have noticed that I didn’t post a “Set your TiVo” this week. I was in the middle of writing down all the baseball that’s going to be on TV and I realized that it’s probably just a big waste of time for me. I mean – if you care enough to want to watch that stuff, you’ll find it on your own. Do you really need me to tell you that there’s a Jim Thome cutout rerun of The Drew Carey Show this week? Plus – I’m not sure that broadcasting is the same from city to city or from one service to another. So, there goes that idea…

Go Mariners!

...is a great show. You should watch it every Thursday night. Never heard of it? Check it out!

Pray for rain

The M’s are scheduled to take on the Rainiers in Tacoma on Saturday. But...what if there’s rain?

"If weather forces the game under the roof at Safeco, all fans, not just those who have tickets for the game in Tacoma, will be invited to attend free of charge."

So, start practicing your rain dance and, hopefully, I’ll see you at Safeco Field!

Baltimore batboys bummed

Anna Benson has filed for a divorce from her husband, Kris. No word yet on whether she'll still let him stick it in her butt if he wins a Cy Young...

Taking everything in stride

As noted over at Lookout Landing, the White Sox’ pitching coach, Don Cooper, thinks he may have fixed Matt Thornton’s control problem. Cooper says that a few years ago, he noticed that Thornton wasn’t striding as far as he should be. It pisses me off that the M’s never noticed this or never tried to fix it, but hindsight is always 20/20. Thornton’s always had great stuff (87 strikeouts in 89.1 innings last year) and if he could harness that control, he could be a very effective relief pitcher. Thornton was great in his outing today, but let’s see if he can keep it up…

Ryan the reliever

Ryan Franklin’s already been bumped out of the rotation in Philly. He probably thinks that’s a bad thing but, actually, being in the bullpen might delay the death threats by a couple weeks.

Also: The Royals placed Bobby Madritsch on the 60-day DL, Randy Johnson is suing the mother of his 16-year-old daughter over less than $100,000, Scott Spiezio is battling Hector Luna and Aaron Miles for the final spot on the Cardinals’ bench, and a 3-year-old boy got stuck in a toy machine at Godfather’s Pizza and Dan Wilson said it was the funniest thing he’s seen in his life. But, no, not that Dan Wilson.

*Here’s a cool article about Bill James. I just finished reading the new biography on Bill James and it was pretty good. As always, if you need a login account for that article, use BugMeNot.

*The guys (and gal!) over at Baseball Prospectus released their AL predictions.

*Here’s an interesting interview with Zack Greinke. He sounds like he’s half-baked. He talks about how much he loves sunsets, how the chirping birds have beautiful flight patterns and about when Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston broke up, he “cried in bed for a while, moaning, “Why? Why did this have to happen?” Listen for yourself…

A few months ago after talking with Baseball Prospectus author Jonah Keri, I did a little research about what makes a pitcher successful. Nothing groundbreaking, but I like to do little research projects like that because they’re fun and I feel I learn more when I work through things on my own, rather than just reading it somewhere. What inspired the research was Jonah telling me that pitchers are generally more successful when they have at least two of the following three traits: a good strikeout rate, a good walk rate, or a good groundball to flyball ratio. And, intuitively, that just makes sense. A pitcher’s very basic job description is to keep as many men off base as possible. He can help himself out by…

A) Striking guys out. Because, unless Josh Paul is catching, you can’t reach base if you whiff. (Sorry, that was harsh!)

B) Limiting walks – don’t give guys free passes!

C) Inducing ground balls – while fly balls turn into outs a higher rate than ground balls, ground balls are good because they do less damage when they do go for hits. Like Orel Hershiser used to tell his pitchers, “When’s the last time you saw a ground ball go over the wall?”

Simple enough, right?

Well, the last time I saw Jonah was at the Baseball Prospectus 2006 / Baseball Between the Numbers book signing at the wonderful Third Place Books. I asked him what he thought about Raul Chaves, the Mariners’ new pitching coach, trying to teach some of the pitchers a two-seam fastball. The two-seamer doesn’t have quite the velocity that the standard four-seam fastball has, but it gets more movement – and is usually better at getting ground-ball outs.

Jonah suggested that I e-mail Will Carroll with that question, so I did. I told Will what Jonah told me about successful pitchers and asked him if teaching pitchers the two-seamer could help to improve their GB/FB ratio. Will was nice enough to e-mail me back and here are some things that he said…

“I disagree vehemently with Jonah on that, but that's not your question. Can teaching a pitcher to sink it or keep the ball down help? Sure, if he executes. I like that Chaves is at least trying something. It depends on the teacher and the student.”

I found it very interesting that Will disagreed with Jonah on the issue and asked him what he thought made a pitcher successful, to which he responded, “Health, location, and deception. Give me five Greg Maddux’s and I'll rule the world.”

Here’s the catch though: Jonah's keys to pitching success are results, whereas the keys Will listed are the traits that lead to the results. Health allows pitchers to pitch, location leads to low walk rates and sometimes groundballs, and deception leads to strikeouts and groundballs. Maddux has sure been healthy. His lowest inning total since 1988 is 199. Of course that’s part of the reason for his Hall of Fame career, and it’s obviously important to try and keep any player healthy as much as possible. So, while Maddux does have pinpoint location and great deception, he’s also always had decent strikeout numbers combined with an above-average groundball rate and good-to-great walk totals.

Will may disagree with Jonah about what makes a successful pitcher, but I hope they don’t waste too much time and energy arguing over it because I think they’re both correct!