Tigers' deadline bust Charlie Morton receives cruel award from HOF writer

Tigers’ deadline bust Charlie Morton receives cruel award from HOF writer originally appeared on The Sporting News

The Detroit Tigers attempted to make a savvy trade by acquiring Charlie Morton from the Baltimore Orioles at the end of July. However, Morton was DFA earlier this month, and the Atlanta Braves have since signed him, and he’s likely to start the last game of the season for the Braves and retire after this season.

Morton signed a one-year, $15 million deal with the Orioles before this season. But the signing didn’t quite work out, and once Baltimore was out of contention, they decided to move on from Morton, who had been bad the entire season.

The 41-year-old starter ended up being worse with the Detroit Tigers.

Charlie Morton named “CY Yuk” of 2025

For those not familiar, MLB writer Jayson Stark does a yearly column around this time of year, where he lists out all of his major award winners, and also names a “CY Yuk”, which is the award for worst starting pitcher in baseball.

This year’s “CY Yuk” was none other than Charlie Morton, who posted a 5.89 ERA in 140.2 innings. Detroit fans would like to forget that he was ever a Tiger, as he posted a 7.09 ERA in 39.1 innings.

Morton was a late bloomer in his career in terms of becoming effective. He was named an all-star in 2018 and 2019 with the Houston Astros, and then moved to the Atlanta Braves, where he helped Atlanta win a World Series in 2021.

However, his ole “Uncle Charlie” curveball is not really effective anymore, and he’s lost some velocity on his fastball in the last few years. He led the American League this season with 92 earned runs, and that’s really the only stat that’s necessary to put yourself on the short list for the “CY Yuk”.

Some of the other candidates, according to Stark, were Walker Buehler and Erick Fedde.

It has not been officially announced by Morton himself, but the likelihood is that he will retire following the season. This may not be what he wants in particular, but the chances of another team taking a chance on him are very slim.

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