As has been the custom over his last few seasons, veteran right-hander Charlie Morton talked things over with his wife after the 2024 campaign to figure out whether or not he would again try to ramp up for another run. This time, however, Morton might’ve on some level made his decision even before his 2024 season was over. Morton told MLB.com’s Jake Rill and other reporters that in his final start of the regular season with the Braves, “I remember walking off the field and just this like sinking feeling in my stomach — it just didn’t feel right. I’m sure a lot of guys toward the end of their careers, they think about retiring, shutting it down, and you really want to walk off the field the last time and feel good about it. And a lot of guys don’t get that opportunity. I just didn’t feel good about it. I felt like I could have done better. I felt like I still had the tools to be a good pitcher in the big leagues.”
Now set to begin his 18th big league season, the 41-year-old Morton signed a one-year, $15MM deal with the Orioles. It was an ideal fit for Morton both because the O’s are a contender, and for important off-the-field reasons. Morton and his wife Cindy each have family relatively near the Baltimore area, and the Orioles’ Spring Training camp in Sarasota is near the Mortons’ home in Bradenton, Florida.
More from around the AL East…
- Erik Neander said “we’ll look for those opportunities” to further bolster the position-player side, but the Rays’ president of baseball operations told Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times believes the team’s offense can improve based on in-house sources alone. “You’re counting on some players internally to take that next step forward or bounce back from where they’ve been, and that was similar to ’22 and obviously ‘23 offensively….There are an assortment of players we have that we think there’s good reason to believe they will be better than where they were last year, and/or just as a unit, that we can be a little bit more better….just kind of using history as a guide,” Neander said. When considering adding veterans to the mix, Topkin notes that along with salary cost, the Rays also weigh whether or not that veteran could take at-bats away from a younger player that might well deliver similar production with the same playing time.
- The Yankees have lost a total of 14 coaches, coordinators, and player-development personnel to other teams since the offseason began, with the New York Daily News’ Gary Phillips running through the full list of departed names throughout the organization. As VP of player development Kevin Reese admits, this is an “unusually high” amount of turnover, though “when other teams are coming after them and getting promotions and bringing guys to the big leagues, that speaks well to the people that we had. We take a lot of pride in having good people and continuing to build it.” The depth of personnel may have contributed to the departures, as “there are only so many spots for people to move up before there’s a logjam,” said Rick Guarno, who is now the Mets’ Triple-A hitting coach after previously working as the hitting coach with the Yankees’ high-A affiliate.