The Baltimore Orioles rotation is a mess, and the front office is to blame.
Mike Elias and the Orioles decided against offering ace Corbin Burnes the deal he wanted. Burnes took a longer-term deal from the Arizona Diamondbacks, which was closer to home and less AAV than he would’ve gotten from Baltimore. When Burnes signed elsewhere, their answer was…Charlie Morton.
The O’s have plenty of young talent that ought to be performing better.
However, Morton and Zach Eflin were their final answer for losing Burnes. Kyle Bradish and Grayson Rodriguez are well established and possibly future aces. However, like most young pitchers, they are also prone to injury.
Morton has received the majority of the blame for Baltimore’s rotation struggles thus far. He was brought in from the Braves as a top-of-the-rotation talent, but he is little better than a bullpen piece at this juncture.
The 41-year-old ran out of gas near the end of last season with the Braves and hasn’t been the same since. Morton did not enjoy his free agency experience, as Atlanta wasn’t interested in a reunion. They may have had a reason for that, as Morton has since been removed from Baltimore’s rotation and sent to the bullpen. Even that approach has failed, as Morton made his first appearance from the O’s pen, and it did not go well.
Charlie Morton is the least of the Orioles problems, but he should’ve retired
Morton gave up two runs in relief for the O’s on Sunday. In just one inning of work he gave up three hits and two earned runs.
His ERA is headed in the wrong direction as well, and it now stands at an alarming 9.76. Just a few weeks ago, Orioles manager Brandon Hyde called the Orioles pitching ’embarrassing’.
“You’re just not going to be able to win games that way,” Hyde said. “You’re going to win them once in a while because you’re going to outscore teams, but that’s not how you win Major League Baseball games.”
Even Morton was down on his confidence. The 41-year-old has pitched in the bigs for quite some time, but has rarely faced a challenge like this one.
“If you said, ‘We’ll give you 30 starts to get this right,’ I’ll get it right. It’s just, how negatively do I affect the team during that process, right? That’s the question,” Morton said. “Do I think that I can still pitch well? Yeah. It’s just some of the things that are going wrong right now — like just throwing strikes, making decent pitches consistently, getting into a rhythm, getting some momentum. That’s the issue.
Since then, matters have only gotten worse. A move to the bullpen hasn’t improved Morton’s production. If anything, this suggests the O’s front office was wrong to begin with.
At 13-20 and 5.5 games back of the AL East-leading Yankees, the Orioles cannot keep blaming Morton for their issues.
