Blue Jays camp tour: Yo-yo routine over for Morrow

DUNEDIN, Fla. -- Brandon Morrow got a flu shot this year. A flu shot and a trade to Toronto.

Sound like a couple of career-righting moves?

Scientists probably would tell you that the flu shot will not inoculate him against a scattered life of bouncing between the bullpen and the rotation. Morrow? He'll take his chances on the unintended side effects.

"We're not going to move him to the bullpen," Toronto manager Cito Gaston said. "We want to make him a starter."

"We acquired him as a starter," Alex Anthopoulos, the Blue Jays' rookie general manager, added. "He seems very comfortable."

Comfortable? If you consider comfortable a big grin, a gritty determination and referring to Toronto as "a beautiful city, one of the cleanest big cities I've ever been in," then, yeah, he's comfortable.

Following three seasons of organizational indecision and a personal failure to launch, Morrow needed to get out of Seattle the way a kid coming home after finishing college needs to move out of his parents' house.

"I think it's a good move for me, yeah," Morrow said. "The whole clean-slate thing. It relaxes the mind, especially because they said coming in that it's going to be a young staff and they're going to build it up.

"The next two or three years, I think it's going to be a great staff."

The Jays are back to taking baby steps in these post-Roy Halladay days. They're adding arms and depth now, figuring to lurch forward in fits and starts and hoping to develop a knockout rotation for 2011, 2012 and beyond.

"It will be nice to be in here at this development stage, and they'll let you develop," Morrow says. "And it doesn't matter if I have four good starts and three bad starts. I'll still be out there."

If that sounds like a mix of paranoia and suspicion, it's because it is. Morrow has been a man looking over his shoulder for three years now.

During that time in Seattle, he played for two general managers (Bill Bavasi and Jack Zduriencik), four field managers (Mike Hargrove, John McLaren, Jim Riggleman and Don Wakamatsu) and three pitching coaches (Rafael Chaves, Mel Stottlemyre and Rick Adair).

That's not a formula for development. It's a recipe for disaster.

Drafted as a starter out of Cal in the summer of '06, Seattle's first-round pick was such a phenom during spring camp in '07 that the Mariners decided to put him on their opening day roster, but as a setup man because they were concerned about over-taxing him.

In '08, he started five games, finished 24, collected 10 saves and worked in a total of 45 games.

In '09, under Zduriencik, the Mariners were determined to make him a starter and stick with it. But not long after spring camp started, Morrow became violently ill with the flu. Diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when he was 18, as Morrow said, "the issue with diabetes is when you get sick, you get more sick."

He missed so much time last spring that he couldn't build up enough stamina to open the season in the rotation. So he again opened in the bullpen. Then in August, the Mariners sent him to Triple-A Tacoma so he could get more innings and come back as a starter.

As the Beatles sang, "You say goodbye, I say hello." Most times, it was hard to tell if he was coming or going.

"Not that they were pushing me in different directions mechanically, but it takes awhile for them to get to know you, and for you to get to know them," Morrow said.

Did the revolving personnel door in Seattle management stunt his major league development?

Morrow paused for a long time, then spoke slowly.

"I don't know," he said. "Probably, I guess. The first regime probably had a long-term idea of what they wanted to do with me."

Then they were gone. And the next group probably had a vision, and ...

Another reason leaving Seattle might be the best thing to ever happen to Morrow: Tim Lincecum. The two came from the same '06 draft, Morrow chosen fifth overall and Lincecum 10th.

Lincecum, already a two-time NL Cy Young winner while Morrow is still looking for traction, is a local hero who pitched for the University of Washington. In Seattle, every Lincecum success magnified Morrow's flat-lining.

"I don't measure myself against him, that would be awfully difficult," Morrow said. "We've had such different paths. I realize that.

"It doesn't bother me, but the Seattle fans and media made a big deal about it. I was always of the mindset that if Tim were a Mariner, he probably would have been in the bullpen in '07."

Instead, in San Francisco, Lincecum started that season in Triple-A Fresno and went 4-0 with a 0.29 ERA in April. The Giants quickly installed him in their rotation in the first week of May, Lincecum made 24 major league starts in '07 and, two Cy Youngs later ...

Different guys, different organizations, different philosophies.

So yes, hello Toronto, where Morrow was traded two days before Christmas. As he said, "the whole clean-slate thing" will allow him to breathe. And, he hopes, become the pitcher he never could become in Seattle.

"All that stuff just stays in the back of people's heads," Morrow said. "There was always the thought that if I was still in Seattle, that I could go back to the bullpen at some point."

Only 25, he has done it all. And in his own mind, there is no question where he wants to be.

"That's been answered for sure over the last three years," he said. "Physically, I feel better starting. It puts me in a better spot mentally. It calms me down a little."

He needs to throw more strikes this spring. He fanned 63 batters and walked 44 in 69 2/3 big league innings last season, an unimpressive ratio that is bound to nick him when he's placed on a regular diet of Red Sox and Yankees this summer.

"His control and command has been the thing that's held him back the most," Anthopoulos said. "But when you throw that hard, command usually comes later.

"He's only 25. We think that will come. I've compared him to a young A.J. Burnett. His walks rates have gotten better from his Florida Marlins days. You can't teach stuff. You can't teach a sharp-biting curve."

With memories of last spring's illness and missed time still haunting him, Morrow got the flu shot before camp started and has been mainlining vitamins in a focused effort to stay healthy. New lives like this don't come around every day. Yo-yo strings aren't easily removed.

Maybe he won't become the next Halladay. Maybe not even the next Dave Stieb, Pat Hentgen or Jim Clancy. At this point, in Toronto, a career like Burnett's looks pretty good.

"It makes it so much easier in anything in life," first-year Toronto pitching coach Bruce Walton said, "knowing what direction you're going."