Morton solid, but Braves' bats silent in loss

Instead of acknowledging the misfortune he encountered during the decisive fifth inning of a 4-0 loss to the Phillies on Saturday afternoon, Charlie Morton focused on how he marred his return to the Braves with one too-generous 1-2 curveball to the aggressive Jean Segura.

“When you look at the location, you wouldn’t say that was a horrible pitch,” Morton said. “It was bottom of the zone. Too much of the plate. But for a 1-2 pitch to Segura, I’d say it was a bad pitch because he can be a little bit more aggressive. That allows you to expand the zone a little bit and I just didn’t do that. I was in the zone and that’s not what I was trying to do.”

Before Segura got just enough of the curveball to send it to left field, Morton had retired 12 of 15 batters and he had faced just one more than the minimum. The 37-year-old right-hander, who finished third in 2019 American League Cy Young Award balloting, was showing why the Braves were so thrilled to sign him to a one-year, $15 million deal in November.

But after Segura created a spark, Morton’s season debut began to deteriorate. He hit Roman Quinn on the foot with a first-pitch curveball and then surrendered a soft single to Phillies starter Zack Wheeler, who tallied more hits (2) than he surrendered (1) over seven scoreless innings. Rhys Hoskins delivered the big blow when his broken-bat, two-run double floated over third baseman Austin Riley’s head.

After opening Philadelphia’s three-run fifth with consecutive strikeouts, Morton needed to face seven more batters before he recorded what was his final out of the day.

“I thought he pitched great,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said. “It was just kind of a weird inning. But overall, I thought both of those guys would be out there for seven innings and it would be 0-0.”

While losing the first two games of this season, the Braves have totaled just two runs, both of which came courtesy of Pablo Sandoval’s pinch-hit, two-run homer on Thursday. Wheeler and an improved Philadelphia bullpen retired Atlanta’s final 23 batters in this game.

The Braves’ bid for a fourth straight National League East title will be significantly influenced by how MVP candidates Ronald Acuña Jr., Freddie Freeman and Marcell Ozuna fare this year.

But a lot of focus will also be placed on their upgraded rotation, which has been victimized by some tough luck so far.

During Thursday’s 10-inning loss on Opening Day, the one ball Max Fried put in play at the plate -- a fifth-inning groundout (105.8 mph) -- had a higher exit velocity than any of the 11 batted balls he surrendered on the mound.

The exit velos of the hits Morton surrendered in the fifth were 85.1 mph (Segura’s single), 74.9 mph (Wheeler’s single) and 72.2 mph (Hoskins’ double).

“That’s just baseball,” Snitker said. “That’s why we keep coming back. It’s a beautiful thing.”

Wheeler, who entered the day with a .150 career batting average, added a two-out RBI double against Newcomb in the sixth. But the suburban Atlanta native was even more impressive on the mound. He recorded 10 strikeouts and surrendered just a Travis d’Arnaud single.

“I really haven’t seen him in person a whole lot,” Morton said. “It’s just such an easy delivery. The ball is just explosive.”

It looked like Morton might draw some similar postgame praise. His four-seam fastball had plenty of life into that fateful fifth that reminded him and his Braves teammates how little room for error there might be this year in the NL East.

“It’s really hard to gauge where I was today,” Morton said. “They weren’t squaring up a whole lot and there weren’t a ton of deep counts. But I wouldn’t say I’m exactly where I want to be. I don’t think I’ll ever get to where I want to be. But certainly I’d like to work past the fifth inning. I was plenty efficient going into that inning to do that.”