As Orioles position players stretched and threw down the right field line three hours before the start of that night’s game, pitchers Zach Eflin and Andrew Kittredge joined them — except their toss involved a football.
The catch wasn’t just for fun. It was a calculated, important task for Eflin on a day off as football catches have become part of his routine in between starts.
No two starting pitchers are the same, all with differing routines to find the path for success when they’re called upon every fifth day. Starters have their own schedules. It’s what makes their lives in a clubhouse full of 26 players so unique.
“We’re very comfortable in the paradigm that’s been created for starting pitchers,” Charlie Morton said.
Morton keeps a simple schedule on a usual four-day break in between starts. He does a lower body lift and cardio the day after a start. The next day, he does an upper body lift alongside running, treatment and a bullpen session. He follows that with core and cardio work and catch the following day. The final off day features catch and light running.
Morton, now in his 18th big league season, has had to make tweaks to his routine throughout his career. For example, this week’s start got pushed back from July 1 to July 4 because of right elbow tendinitis. However, he’s had to overhaul his bullpen sessions as time has gone on as well.
Morton used to throw up to 40 pitches in his bullpens if he was trying to work on something specific, but that resulted in diminished velocity and stamina by June. Though it wasn’t easy — Morton noted how starters are creatures of habit and scared to make big adjustments — he changed his routine when he arrived in Tampa Bay in 2019.
Rays pitching coach Kyle Snyder challenged Morton to throw 15-pitch bullpens, slowly trimming the number of pitches he threw in ensuing sessions.
“I started to realize to hit that space in my mind where I felt good about where I was, it didn’t take 30 pitches,” Morton said. “And it probably made me focus a little bit more on each pitch and kind of feeling what I wanted to feel.”
Morton’s change in mentality resulted in immediate positive results. He was an All-Star and finished third in American League Cy Young voting with a career-best 3.05 ERA in his first season in Tampa Bay.
More efficient bullpen sessions have helped Morton pitch into his 40s. Before Morton joined the Rays, his career ERA before June was 4.08 and after June was 4.37. Since then, his marks before June are 3.94 and 3.87 afterward.
“As I’ve thrown over the years, I just think that it’s kind of a responsibility to calibrate your expectations and to really focus on what you’re trying to get out of it,” Morton said.
Eflin’s bullpens have stayed about the same throughout his career. He has always liked to keep the sessions light, normally capping them at 18 pitches. Like Morton, he does an upper body lift, some running and arm care after his bullpens. Unlike Morton, those bullpens come on his third day off.
Eflin uses his first day after a start as a complete off day for recovery, limiting any work to soft tissue treatment, then uses the next day for a lower body lift and running. He’ll throw both a baseball and football around on the second day off, a habit he picked up within the last couple years.
“It kind of helps my arm slot get back into a slide because you go to be pretty over the top with a football,” Eflin said.
Eflin does a little bit of arm care and running the day before a start, keeping it light similarly to Morton. One of the biggest overall differences between the two is that Eflin likes to take ground balls pregame with the infielders throughout the week while Morton relatively keeps interactions brief with the position players before games.
Starters are in charge of the homer hose during games when they’re not pitching that day.
“We’re kind of just out there to be cheerleaders,” Eflin said.
That’s why the middle of a game is one of the best times for starters to go in the clubhouse with trainers to get treatment, Eflin said. The 31-year-old often gets soft tissue work or needling done. Eflin currently has more time for that, having just hit the injured list with lower back discomfort. Brandon Young was recalled in his absence.
Starters haven’t always been able to get consistent treatment done. When Morton arrived in the majors in 2008, being in the training room as a starting pitcher at any time was “a big no-no,” he said. As time went on, that changed.
Morton said he realized in his mid 30s that he needed a substantial amount of treatment to keep his career going. The only way he wouldn’t be in the way of an everyday player was to do it during the game.
Morton noted how when he was with the Astros in 2017 and 2018, George Springer called the starting pitchers “house cats” — referring to the need for comfortability. Without sticking to a routine, they wouldn’t be able to handle the stress of pitching every fifth day.
The expectations of having “the most important job on the team at that moment,” as Morton put it, are high. Only a select few in the clubhouse know what that feels like, but Morton loves it.
“It’s the life,” Morton said. “The life of a starting pitcher, I don’t know how much better it can get.”
Photo Credits: Colin Murphy/PressBox and Courtesy of the Baltimore Orioles