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\n\tIt’s a practice the Twins have also used with Mick Abel<\/a> and even Pablo L\u00f3pez<\/a> in recent history.\u00a0But all of that camouflage only addresses the things a pitcher can control with his hands and body. Pitchers are still human, and humans have habits. Sometimes those habits have nothing to do with the pitching motion itself.\n<\/p>\n \n\tA pitcher chewing gum on one type of pitch but not another<\/a> can be enough. Morris found that out the hard way toward the end of 2025.\n<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI would stop chewing it on offspeed pitches, and I continued to chew it on fastballs,\u201d Morris told the Star Tribune<\/a> after giving up 10 runs in two outings against the Iowa Cubs early in 2025. \u201cI really just had no idea what was going on. They were just on everything for a couple starts. I know those are some conscious things I do with my mouth, so that\u2019s tough. It\u2019s not anything, like, physical. It was weird. It was tough.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\tMorris had actually started chewing gum because he believed he had previously been giving away pitches with his tongue. The gum was supposed to give him something else to occupy himself with but became another tell. That history makes what has happened to Morris in August worth watching.\n<\/p>\n \n\tFor most of the season, Morris had been one of the Twins’ most reliable late-inning weapons. In June and July, he made 25 appearances, going 3-0 with two saves and 10 holds while posting a 2.22 ERA and 2.77 FIP. He struck out 31 hitters in 28\u2153 innings and, at least arguably, became the strongest bridge the Twins had to get from the middle innings to the back end of the bullpen.\n<\/p>\n \n\tAugust has been a different story. It\u2019s one of blown leads and losses. It\u2019s an inflated walk rate with an over 7.00 ERA to boot (and if it weren\u2019t for a catcher\u2019s interference call in San Diego, it could be substantially worse). Relief pitchers can be fickle and small sample sizes can skew things quickly, but there seems to be more at play with Morris.\n<\/p>\n \n\tLet\u2019s go back to his outing in San Diego. Morris was called upon to protect a 5-2 lead against a surging Padres offense. He retired Xander Bogaerts<\/a> on a ground ball, and then Freddy Fermin<\/a> reached first after catcher Ryan Jeffers<\/a> was charged with interference.\n<\/p>\n \n\tFrom there, the floodgates opened: The next four Padres reached base, and the Twins’ 5-2 lead became a 6-5 deficit.\n<\/p>\n \n\tTo be clear, Fermin reaching base was not Morris’ fault. Neither was Kaelen Culpepper<\/a> attempting to cut down the runner at third with one out. Baseball is full of sequences where several independent events snowball into one ugly inning.\n<\/p>\n \n\tWhat makes this particular inning interesting is how some of the Padres’ swings looked.\n<\/p>\n \n\tTake Fernando Tatis Jr.<\/a> going the other way on a 1-2 elevated fastball:\n<\/p>\n \t\tVndQVlJfWGw0TUFRPT1fVjFWWVZRVlFCQVFBQ2dZQlVnQUhWd01DQUZoWFZWY0FWMUFHQUZBTVVnQldVd0lG.mp4<\/a><\/p>\n \n\tOr Jake Cronenworth<\/a> waiting on a 0-0 fastball at the top of the zone and slicing it into the gap for a two-run double:\n<\/p>\n \t\tVndQVlJfWGw0TUFRPT1fVndGUUFnQUVBbEVBV1FRR1Z3QUhBZ05VQUZrRkFBY0FDbE1DQVFSVUNGQUdCZ0Zm.mp4<\/a><\/p>\n \n\tAfter Tatis scores, the broadcast shows him running toward the next hitter and communicating something.\n<\/p>\n \n\tWhat that something was is impossible to know from the television broadcast. It could have been as simple as relaying information about the shape of Morris’s fastball or offering a reminder to stay back and stay on top of the elevated pitch. It could have been something from the scouting report, perhaps a tendency involving Morris’s gum chewing or another physical tell. Or it could have been nothing particularly meaningful at all. That distinction matters.\n<\/p>\n \n\tManny Machado<\/a> came to the plate next and did not see a single fastball. He saw four consecutive cutters, eventually grounding one to Culpepper at shortstop. Then Ty France<\/a> followed and produced another swing that looked similar to what Tatis and Cronenworth had done earlier in the inning:\n<\/p>\n \t\tVndQVlJfWGw0TUFRPT1fQlZKWFUxY0dYMUVBV3dkWFVnQUhCd1VDQUZnRUFWTUFWQVFFQVFFTkNGSlVCZ1VI.mp4<\/a><\/p>\n \n\tA similar thing showed up in the series against the geographically abandoned Athletics, when savvy veteran Jeff McNeil<\/a> turned on a first-pitch fastball and lasered a double down the line.\n<\/p>\n \t\tMnI5T05fWGw0TUFRPT1fVjFOWUFWQUJVUW9BV1ZJRFV3QUhVd2NDQUFBQlZnTUFBbEpUVlFzQlVnUlRWZ3Rl.mp4<\/a><\/p>\n
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