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BALTIMORE — Moved to the bullpen after logging a 9.45 ERA through seven starts and 26.2 innings with the Baltimore Orioles, veteran right-hander Charlie Morton believes he has hit rock bottom.
“My ceiling is higher than people think, but my floor is about where I’m at,” Morton said inside the Orioles clubhouse before Baltimore opened a three-game series against the Kansas City Royals at Camden Yards. “There’s nothing to me suggesting in the offseason or spring training that I was going to come here in my first five starts … I don’t think anybody in here saw that. I don’t think anybody on the coaching staff saw it. I don’t think we saw anything glaring that said this is bad.”
While no one may have been able to see the future, plenty are seeing the present numbers and wondering if Morton’s tenure with the Orioles will be ill-fated.
Morton, however, is not one of those people. He made clear on Friday that his arsenal is no different than last year, when he made 30 starts for the Atlanta Braves and posted a 4.19 ERA over 165.1 innings.
“If you looked at my stuff, like metrically, I don’t think you’re going to see very much difference between that and any outing last year or the year before,” Morton said. “I don’t think you’re going to find glaring issues with my stuff.”
Baseball Savant helps explain the differences between Morton’s 2024 and 2025 campaigns.
This season, some numbers jump out in comparison, including the percentage of “blasts” (a blast, by Statcast definition, is when a batter squares up a ball and does so with a high bat speed). His blast contact percentage has gone from 13.3% in 2023 to 15.5% in 2024 to 17.9% in 2025. His blast swing percentage also increased significantly from 10.9 in 2024 to 13.8 this year.
Additionally, his hard hit percentage has skyrocketed, from 38.4 last year to 48.9 this season.
Moreover, his curveball has become an albatross after being an out pitch for him for much of his 18-year MLB career. Between 2013 and 2024, batters never hit more than .228 against it (in a smaller sample size during the COVID-shortened season of 2020). This year, opponents are hitting .333 against the hook.
“It’s hard for me to sit here and look at you after five starts, and go, this is like a complete 180 from where I was when I was a good starting pitcher. I just don’t think that’s the case,” Morton said. “I think it’s just enough in a small window. It looks really bad because some of those outings are basically the worst outcomes that could have happened.”
Still, Morton is adamant that this isn’t a time to give up on what he can bring to the Orioles. He accepts his role in the bullpen and believes better things are ahead.
“I think making some small adjustments and trying to get my tempo and timing back and my release right, that’s going to allow me to be more competitive, especially just throwing strikes and locating the ball a little bit better,” Morton said.
“I can’t look at the video of my outings, and I can’t look at the video of my mechanics or the charts of my stuff, and say that’s where everything just went downhill. I just don’t see it. I see it in the outcomes, but I don’t see it.”
