The Rockaway Wave
Originally Published July 12, 2024
On his 100th pitch of the night, Kade Morris recorded his seventh — and final — strikeout of the night to seal Brooklyn’s 4-0 shutout. Morris let out a fierce, guttural scream on the mound, finishing what might have been his finest outing of the season to date.
“That was just raw emotion,” Morris said. “That was what I had, and what just came out of me naturally.”
Maimonides Park had a big crowd on hand to watch Kodai Senga, who was making his first rehab start and live in-game appearance since September 27, 2023. The recorded attendance was over 5,000, more than double what Baseball America lists as the average attendance for the Cyclones in 2024.
“It was awesome, that crowd was electric,” Morris said. “You just kind of dream for stuff like that, and hopefully I get a long career where I get a whole stadium filled out and they’re chanting and screaming. I just eat that environment up, it’s awesome.”
Morris went 6 and 1⁄3 innings following Senga’s 2 and 2⁄3, striking out seven while allowing four hits, four walks and zero runs. It was his second-longest outing of the season and his longest with Brooklyn.
Cyclones pitching coach Daniel McKinney said Morris’ final pitch of the night was a 95-mph fastball.
“It’s definitely something you like to see,” McKinney said. “For me, he’s a high floor, high ceiling type guy. He’s shown the ability to make the ball move a lot of different ways. He’s a strike thrower, he’s continuing to find ways to attack the opposite hand, and clearly he can hold his velo. Kade is a really exciting arm, and I think his best baseball is still ahead of him.”
Morris attended John H. Pitman High School in Turlock, California, and was crosstown rivals with a Turlock High School team that featured Tyler Soderstrom and Cole Carrigg. Soderstrom was at one point the No. 1 prospect in Oakland’s system before he graduated, and Carrigg was a 2nd-round pick of Colorado in 2023.
Andy Walker, Morris’ high school coach, said the future Cyclone would match up well with not just Soderstrom and Carrigg, but anyone in what was a competitive league.
“He was electric,” Walker said. “He had great stuff, command was really good, velocity was great, his pitchabiliy, use of his secondary pitches was great. You could just see a sense of confidence in him. … When you have a guy like that on the mound, your whole team kind of
rises up that day and they feel like they’re invincible, and they can beat anybody with him on the mound.”
Walker said he knew early on Morris was destined for great things in baseball, and a turning point for him was in a game at Turlock High School during his junior year. One of Turlock’s pitchers was getting a lot of attention which led to a game heavily attended by scouts, but Morris stole the show.
“I kind of knew that he had the potential to be a professional arm down the road, I had sensed it all year,” Walker said. “But I think for other people to see it and observe it, that was kind of a defining moment for him as far as getting his name out there a little bit and getting a little bit more recognition and exposure.”
Morris went on to pitch at the University of Nevada in the Mountain West Conference — maybe the worst environment for pitchers in the country. Many schools in the conference are located well above all MLB ballparks aside from Coors Field, and there are even a few that surpass the infamous home of the Rockies.
Nevada head coach Jake McKinley said he remembers a home run in particular that Morris surrendered at the University of New Mexico. The Lobos’ stadium is listed on their website at an elevation of 6,788 feet, well over 1,000 feet higher than Coors Field. It was a cold night with the wind howling out to left field, and a left-handed hitter took Morris deep to the opposite field. The ball, McKinley said, had a launch angle of about 37 degrees and an exit velocity of 87 mph.
In Major League Baseball in 2024, 19 balls have been hit with those exact exit numbers. All 19 were routine flyouts. In the Mountain West, it’s a home run.
“I think that pitching in our conference can make a guy better for pro baseball because you have to strike people out in this league,” McKinley said. “There’s no pitch to contact in the Mountain West. Pitching to contact is a death sentence. … It’s a brutal conference to pitch in, but again, I think for the model that professional baseball operates under, it can be in the best interest of the pitcher to actually pitch in a climate like this.”
Morris finished his junior year, which was his only year under McKinley and his only year used primarily as a starting pitcher, with a 5.42 ERA in 14 starts. It was the highest mark among Nevada’s starting pitchers and the ninth-best among Mountain West pitchers with double-digit starts. He also finished with 85 strikeouts, the third-most in the conference.
“He competed, which I know is so cliché,” McKinley said. “His stuff, it was up and down during the year … but regardless of what the profile was, I just felt like once the lights came on and it was time to go get people out, he was just gonna find a way to do that despite what the stuff was like on that given day.”
The New York Mets selected Morris in the 3rd round of the 2023 MLB Draft at pick No. 101 and signed for exactly his slot value of $666.50k. He made two quick appearances in the Florida
Complex League and Single-A to close out 2023 and began his 2024 season with Single-A St. Lucie.
He made seven appearances for St. Lucie with six of them being starts, only coming out of the bullpen to relieve David Peterson after his rehab start. In 34 and 2⁄3 innings, Morris had a 3.63 ERA with 38 strikeouts and 11 walks, earning a promotion to Brooklyn.
In his Cyclones debut in late May he shoved, striking out seven and giving up just one run over six innings. Morris followed up his debut with a few more strong starts, but ran into a rough patch in June. In just two starts, he gave up 12 earned runs in 8 and 1⁄3 innings, seeing his High-A ERA jump from 1.17 to 5.32. He got back on the right track after that, throwing up a pair of six- inning, two-run games before his scoreless outing behind Senga brought his Brooklyn ERA back under four.
Morris said his hard slider and two-seamer have been his two “benchmark pitches,” and he’s working on improving his changeup and curveball.
He also said he and the organization have been working to lower his arm slot for his four-seam fastball and curveball to bring it more in line with his other pitches. He said the way he throws his two-seam fastball, which is a bit more sidearm than fully over the top, is his natural arm slot. However, when he’d throw his four-seam and curveball, he would raise it.
McKinney said working to get the arm slots for all of his pitches match has been a big focus for Morris this season.
The start before he relieved Senga, McKinney said Morris’ release differential between his pitches was the tightest it had been which helped his four-seam and curveball play really well. In his appearance following Senga — even with the great results — it climbed up a bit, which McKinney thinks negatively impacted his curveball control.
He said the best he saw Morris’ curveball look was when its release point was the closest it had been to his other pitches. By keeping the arm slots as similar as possible it makes for a more easily repeatable delivery.
“You don’t have to always be tinkering with the slots,” McKinney said. “I think it’s the way his body prefers to rotate and move, out of that natural slot, which is that lower slot. And obviously, we don’t want [hitters] to know that hey, if you see a high slot, it’s gonna be one of two. So if we can keep everything out of the same window, I think it’s easier for Kade to repeat and it looks the same to the hitter.”
Cyclones manager Gilbert Gómez said he loves Morris’ competitiveness and is excited by what he’s seen from him lately.
“He’s a fiery guy, he’s gonna go out there and give his best, he’s gonna pump his team up, he’s gonna let you know when he does something good,” Gómez said. “I think the future is really
bright with him. I think he’s one of those guys that slowly but surely will mature into being one of the top pitchers in our organization.”
Morris said he’s just keeping the mindset of trying to be 1% better each day.
“You can get so caught up in the stats and the big picture stuff, all the things that happen in a long season, but you just gotta learn how to love the process,” Morris said. “I love coming in every day and just getting after it.”
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