Kendrys Morales somehow manages scoreless inning in pitching cameo

As a player without a position, the greatest weakness Kendrys Morales has is a lack of versatility.

The veteran slugger locks down the designated hitter role day-in and day-out, making it difficult for his club to give veteran players a breather, and when he is on the bench all he can really do is pinch hit.

That was the theory until Sunday, anyway. In the midst of a grim blowout loss to the Oakland Athletics, the 34-year-old showed some utility he’s never demonstrated before by taking to the mound.

That sentence may seem far-fetched to the point of being unbelievable, so here’s some visual evidence:

Morales threw a scoreless ninth inning, with his only blemish being a walk to Athletics’ third baseman Matt Chapman. He wasn’t impressive, exactly, but he was functional, eliciting three fly balls, two of them of the harmless variety, the other a hard-hit ball off the bat of Jonathan Lucroy.

In terms of repertoire, the DH threw primarily “changeups” and “sliders” in the mid-80’s with a curveball in the mid-70s. His scattershot zone profile looked like this:

If Morales takes the mound again, he’ll need to work on his control, but as position player pitching goes the performance wasn’t half bad. Sure he threw only 43.8 percent strikes and failed to get a whiff, but the fact that he had pitches at multiple speeds put him ahead of most of his peers.

Considering he’s currently hitting .165/.250/.282 with a -0.9 WAR, Morales provided more positive value to the Blue Jays as a pitcher in one day than he managed in 32 games with the bat. Perhaps more importantly, he provided a little bit of fun for Blue Jays fans on Sunday – something that he certainly hasn’t done much of this season.

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