stlcardinals.com
May 4, 2002

Morris Comes Up Short in Pitcher's Duel

By Matthew Leach

ST. LOUIS -- Matt Morris gave the Cardinals everything they could have hoped for on Friday night. Well, everything they could have reasonably hoped for.

Morris enjoyed easily his finest start of the year, pitching eight shutout innings, allowing the Braves just three hits and walking three, but without any run support he wasn't able to pick up his fifth win of the season. In the 11th inning, Chipper Jones crushed a two-run homer off reliever Gene Stechschulte and Atlanta beat St. Louis 2-1.

The loss was tough to take because Morris provided the Cardinals the one quantity start they have sorely lacked this season: quality innings from their starting pitchers. With five starters on the DL and Darryl Kile still not at his best after offseason shoulder surgery, Morris has been the team's most reliable starter. But even he has faltered a bit lately, losing his last two starts.

This was a big game for Morris and the team, even if he didn't look at it that way.

"I try to keep them all the same," Morris said. "If I start thinking one's bigger than the others... It's, what, first of May? If this is a big start, what's September gonna be? I just go out there and try to make pitches and try to go deep. For myself for one, but I know our bullpen needed some help and needed a day off. I want all nine but in this case it just didn't work out."

Of course, when you lose a big game, it's a tough loss. And this was a hard one to take.

"That's the worst part of it, is the club didn't win," Morris said. "That was a game we needed to have to start off the series. But that's baseball. When it's a well-played game you just tip your hat and think about tomorrow. Hopefully that's what we all do."

Morris likely could have gone another inning with no problem. He was cruising, his last four innings were quite a bit better than his first four. But in a 0-0 game, manager Tony La Russa elected to pull Morris for a pinch-hitter. After all, there was one thing Morris didn't contribute in this win.

"I could have asked him to hit a home run," La Russa said when asked whether he could have asked for any more from Morris.

He could have asked that of any of the St. Louis hitters, though. On this night they didn't deliver. Held hitless by Braves rookie Damian Moss for seven innings, and scoreless for 10 innings, the Cards finally pushed across a run in the 11th -- but only after the Braves had two. Moss walked seven Cardinals, but the team simply couldn't come up with the big base hit.

"You can get into a rut, and just like you can get into a rut, you can get out of it," La Russa said. "Give Moss a lot of credit. Because he was really erratic. He put the leadoff man on base a lot, but when he had to make a quality pitch, he made (one). Over and over and over again. There (were) a number of times in that game where we took a hittable pitch and then we chased (a bad one)."

Morris' eight-inning outing was the longest by any Cards starter this year. It was also only the second time this year that a St. Louis starter left the game without having allowed a run. The other? Emergency starter Mike Crudale, who pitched two innings on April 26 in Montreal. Morris had no interest in his personal accomplishment afterward, though.

"It's tough to say when you lose," Morris said. "My goal is just to win ballgames. I don't care if I throw it lefty or throw it righty. It's just about getting a win. Just the way it worked out today, man. It was a well-played game and hats off to Chipper."