EVERETT — After throwing an inning, Everett AquaSox pitcher Michael Morales slowly strolls off the mound toward his team’s dugout, looking like he’s reflecting on the three outs of dominance he just inflicted on the other team.
Instead, he’s thinking about everything except the pitches he delivered.
“Honestly, I just check out,” said Morales, a 6-foot-2, 205-pound starting pitcher. “If it’s a nice sunset, I’ll look at the sunset, or I’ll look at the birds and the sky. I’ll check back and see what the hot dog of the week is.
“Just try to think as little as possible about what just happened — good or bad. As I’m coming off the mound, the job at that time is done.”
In a sport in which caring too much in the moment often leads to failure, the 21-year-old is learning to trust his arm and leave the rest up to the baseball gods and the AquaSox defense. His willingness to put the ball in the strike zone and challenge hitters has led to seven straight starts of six or more innings pitched heading into Friday’s game. He had allowed just nine earned runs in eight May and June starts as his earned-run average dropped from 4.00 to 2.39.
“It’s just trusting his stuff over the plate, because his stuff is so good.” AquaSox manager Ryan Scott said. “And he’s an ultra competitor on the mound.”
Morales, who was drafted at age 18 by the Seattle Mariners in the third round of the 2021 MLB draft, said he’s grown up during his four seasons in the minors. Always confident in his abilities, the results were mixed early on. In Single A Modesto, the right-hander went 5-7 with a 5.91 ERA in 2022. In 2023, his ERA dipped to 4.53. In his first 14 games this season, Morales recorded an 8-1 record with a 2.39 ERA while striking out 77 batters in 79 innings.
The Mariners don’t often use early draft picks on high school pitchers, but the major-league club made an exception when it selected Morales out of East Pennsboro High School in Enola, Pennsylvania. Graduating from a high school of approximately 800 students and changing coasts was both a baseball and a life adjustment.
“Now doing it as a job, and doing it every single day — I had a lot of growing up to do,” Morales said. “For me, it was, ‘What kind of grownup am I going to be? Who am I as a person?’”
Andrew Miller, a 26-year-old AquaSox catcher, has caught Morales in Modesto and Everett in games and countless bullpen sessions. He’s not surprised to see Morales succeeding this season.
“He’s just confident with everything,” Miller said. “He’s not out there scared like you see with most high schoolers. You can tell that each year he’s gotten better and better from what I’ve seen out of him.”
Morales believes this year he truly understands what it means to be a professional baseball player, and the difference between going through the motions and knowing why those motions could put him in the majors in the near future.
He’s also learned that he’ll need an arsenal of pitches that go where he wants them to land. Morales uses a fastball that is typically 92-94 miles per hour. The pitches in the lower 80s, however, have been what has led to much of his recent success. Batters have struggled against his changeup command and a newly added gyro slider this season.
“The way he carries himself and the way he executes on the mound has been taken to another level,” AquaSox pitching coach Cameron Ming said. “In year’s past, it felt like he tried to be someone he was not, and tried to do too much. Now it’s just trusting what he does day in and day out, week in and week out.”
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