If this means, as it seems, that an addition at the top of the rotation isn’t happening, that sucks.
The Orioles made another surprise addition to their 2025 starting rotation on Friday night, announcing the signing of veteran right-hander Charlie Morton to a contract for the 2025 season. Morton will receive a reported $15 million salary from the team as he hopefully does whatever it is that Mike Elias thinks that Morton is going to do to make it worth the money and rotation spot.
My knee-jerk reaction to the signing is that this stinks. It’s not so much because of anything to do with Morton himself – we’ll get to that – as it is that this does feel like it’s going to be the last move about the Orioles rotation. This is not the bolster the top of the rotation and move everyone else down a spot move that it seems like the team really needed to do.
This is just plugging another old guy along with Tomoyuki Sugano at the back of the rotation. It probably doesn’t even do the thing that I’ve been hoping would happen for like two years now, which is knock Dean Kremer lower than #3 in the rotation.
Adding in the $15 million for Morton kicks up the free agent payroll that the Orioles have committed for the 2025 season to $53 million. That’s real money. They’ve gone out and spent some of David Rubenstein’s money as they now have a payroll about $50 million over last year’s. They just have not spent it in ways that generate much in the way of immediate excitement because they are not signings that come with a high probability of making the kind of impact that it feels like the team was missing at the start of the offseason.
Though Morton is a 17-year MLB veteran, his being any kind of useful pitcher only dates back to 2017, when he joined the Astros. From that point up to now, he’s posted a 3.64 ERA and 3.63 FIP, striking out 10.3 batters per nine innings while walking 3.3. He mostly limits home runs as well. Excluding the 2020 pandemic-shortened season, he’s started 30 or more games every year since 2018. He pitched key World Series innings for the championship-winning Astros in 2017 and Braves in 2021.
Much more recently, Morton had a 3.4 bWAR season with Atlanta in 2023 before slipping back up to a 4.19 ERA for 2024. Though he has made those 30+ start seasons, he hasn’t averaged more than six innings per start in the last three years. This isn’t an innings-eating signing, even. It’s a probably-not-going-to-the-IL signing. That does have some value. Does it have the value the Orioles need right now? I’m not so sure.
Let’s guess that this sets up the following Opening Day Orioles rotation:
- Zach Eflin
- Grayson Rodriguez
- Dean Kremer
- Charlie Morton
- Tomoyuki Sugano
The offseason’s signings have succeeded at not forcing Cade Povich into the early rotation, and seemingly have also succeeded at having Plan A not include that we find out whether Trevor Rogers can do anything to justify Elias’s decision to acquire him.
Again, that’s not nothing. These fortifying the back of the rotation moves ought to help the Orioles make sure they can make it back into the postseason. Whether there is any impact on advancing past a postseason series or even winning one game in such a series, well… let’s hope that the team makes it to October and we can find that out.