Why Luis Morales' Velocity Dip Isn't a Cause For Concern—Yet
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Right-hander Luis Morales is expected to make the A's Opening Day rotation this season after making his MLB debut a year ago, but according to his manager, nothing is guaranteed. The final two spots in the rotation are open, so Morales will have to earn his way onto the A's roster, battling a number of intriguing arms in camp.
The A's dropped their second game of the spring, 6-0 to the Cleveland Guardians on Sunday afternoon in Mesa, Arizona, but their lack of offense wasn't what stood out when looking at some of the stats from this one.
Instead, it was the performance of Luis Morales, who pitched fine in his first spring appearance, going two innings, giving up two hits, one earned run and striking out one. He even did this on an impressive 23 total pitches, 17 of which were strikes. The results were there for him.
His only run allowed came on a groundout in the top of the sixth. Ralphy Velazquez led off the frame with a single, and Angel Genao stroked a one-out single to center, pushing Velazquez to third. He scored on a Dayan Frias ground out. Could that have turned out differently in a regular season scenario? Perhaps. And that's why some numbers don't matter as much in spring training.
Should there be concerns about Morales' velocity drop?
But the real takeaway came from looking at his pitch metrics on Baseball Savant, where his velocity was down between one to four ticks across the board.
His four-seamer averaged 96.2 miles per hour on Sunday, down 1.1 mph from last season. His slider had the biggest dip, going from 85.8 in 2025 to 81.9 this time out. His sweeper dropped by 2.2 mph, and his changeup was down to 87.1, a drop of 2.7 mph.
The easy answer here is that this is his first outing of the spring, and his velocity will begin picking up as he continues to get more reps on the mound. The whole purpose of camp is to ramp up, not to be in midseason form from your first outing.
Some may look at Luis Severino's velocity from this same game, seeing that he was up a tick or two across the board, and wonder why he's not in the same boat. Again, this is a simple explanation. Severino will be pitching in the World Baseball Classic beginning early next month, so his meaningful games are much closer to being played.
He told MLB.com of getting ready to pitch earlier than usual, "Usually, I don’t get into games until maybe [the second week of games],” Severino said. “I think pitching now and having another game before I go up there is going to be good for me."
We could also point to a couple of random pitchers in the game that were also down from where they were last year in their own first outings on Sunday, in Bryan Bello of the Boston Red Sox and Yariel Rodríguez of the Toronto Blue Jays.
Bello was down at least one mph on most of his pitches, while Rodríguez was down between 1.5 mph and three miles per hour across the board. Other pitcher's velocity was up. Again, it's not worrisome for Morales unless the velocity doesn't start to return in the next couple of outings.
The other reason for this could be that Morales is fairly new to the big leagues, and may not have his preparation schedule hammered down just yet. This is something that comes with getting more reps in spring training, and learning what needs to happen, and when. Finding a routine is something you hear veterans talk about a fair amount about.
One more tidbit to watch
One of the best parts of Spring Training is pouring over the new data that comes in to see what changes we should be on the lookout for in the upcoming season.
It's tough to make big prognostications based off of one outing in the spring, but there was one last thing that caught our eye from Morales' stat line, and that was his pitch usage compared to how it played out a year ago.
The big difference between Sunday and 2025 was that his slider went fro 8% usage last year to 22% yesterday. Obviously this is also a small sample size, so it boils down to throwing a couple extra, not 14 extra across 100 pitches. It would appear as though there may have been an emphasis on the pitch, however.
The other interesting part here is that his sweeper (17%) was used roughly the same amount as the slider, while his usage of the pitch dropped 10% from last year. His changeup stayed the same at 13%.
What we're going to be looking for from Morales in outing number two this spring is whether he continues to use his slider and sweeper a similar amount, perhaps trying to keep batters off-balance with the movement game.
Perhaps that velo dip was partly due to trying to blend the sweeper and the slider togehter with a smaller gap in their velocities. Last year the slider came in at 85.8 mph, while the sweeper was 82.3, good for a difference of 3.5 mph. On Sunday, that difference was down to 1.8 mph, with the sweeper barely cracking 80, at 80.1 mph.
If this ends up being the case, it would be an interesting strategy for him, as the two pitches would blend together a bit more, with the sweeper bending more late. It could also be a way to reach back for an extra burst when needed for a mid-80's slider that could catch hitters off guard. That's the name of the game, after all, is to disrupt timing and keep the ball off the barrel of the bat.
Morales has plenty of potential that A's fans are looking forward to seeing more of this season.
Jason has been covering the A’s at various sites for over a decade, and was the original host of the Locked on A’s podcast. He also covers the Stanford Cardinal as they attempt to rebuild numerous programs to prominence.
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