{"id":217370,"date":"2025-08-01T07:13:17","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T07:13:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/217370\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T07:13:17","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T07:13:17","slug":"detroit-tigers-acquire-veteran-starting-pitcher-charlie-morton-from-baltimore-orioles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/217370\/","title":{"rendered":"Detroit Tigers acquire veteran starting pitcher Charlie Morton from Baltimore Orioles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Detroit \u2013 The Tigers capped a hectic day of trades with a showstopper.<\/p>\n

President of baseball Scott Harris, as is his way, took it right to the wire Thursday, adding 41-year-old veteran starting pitcher Charlie Morton from the Baltimore Orioles.<\/p>\n

The Tigers also got cash back in the deal and sent left-handed pitcher Micah Ashman, who was recently promoted to Double-A Erie, to the Orioles.<\/p>\n

“He’s going to really help our rotation,” Harris said. “We like Charlie because he’s battle-tested. He’s been up to 97 mph with his fastball and he’s got a swing-and-miss curveball. He’s pitched for AJ (Hinch) before and he really endorsed him.”<\/p>\n

Adding Morton to the rotation will move rookie Troy Melton to the bullpen.<\/p>\n

“We’re adding some swing-and-miss and some length (to the bullpen) where we need it,” Harris said. “Our fans saw us use our pitching pretty creatively last year. Adding Troy to our bullpen give us a pretty dynamic right-handed, swing-and-miss option to go along with a pretty dynamic left-handed, swing-and-miss option in Brant Hurter.”<\/p>\n

More: Tigers expect quick help from Finnegan; Montero, Sewald payoffs might be later<\/a><\/p>\n

Subscribers: Henning: Tigers parted with quality prospects in beefing up rotation, bullpen<\/a><\/p>\n

Morton, a two-time World Series champion, got off to a horrendous start in this, his 18th season. But after a brief move to the bullpen, he has returned to form.<\/p>\n

“He’s been on quite a good run,” Harris said. “His top-line performance (numbers) are a little misleading. Since the end of April, he’s been on a really good run, sub-4.00 ERA and throwing a ton of strikes with a ton of swing and miss.”<\/p>\n

Over his last 11 starts, he\u2019s gone 7-1 with a 3.88 ERA. He continues to effectively work an elite, 3,158-rpm curveball (33.9% whiff rate) around 94-mph four-seam fastballs and sinkers, mixing in changeups and cutters.<\/p>\n

“I think he’s going to add to a rotation that has suffered a number of injuries this year,” Harris said. “It’s pretty hard to be in the spot we’re in right now with the number of injuries we’ve had, but we’ve had guys step up. And now we’ve added Chris Paddack and Charlie Morton to the rotation.”<\/p>\n

More: Tigers bolster bullpen by acquiring veteran Rafael Montero from Braves<\/a><\/p>\n

Morton, while pitching for Hinch in Houston, helped the Astros win the 2017 World Series, winning Game 7 in both the ALCS and the World Series.<\/p>\n

His next start, which could be this week in Philadelphia, will be No. 400 in his career. He’s got 145 wins, a 4.08 ERA with 2,148 strikeouts.<\/p>\n

Chris.McCosky@detroitnews.com<\/a><\/p>\n

@cmccosky<\/p>\n

Want to comment on this story? Become a subscriber today. Click here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Detroit \u2013 The Tigers capped a hectic day of trades with a showstopper. President of baseball Scott Harris,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217371,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2374],"tags":[143,47,2538,5,1858,16205,9253,1078,3494,752,147,53,3993,4,12791,169,125,300,316,7275,301,1646,1914,185,317,594,1645,1039],"class_list":{"0":"post-217370","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baltimore-orioles","8":"tag-baltimore","9":"tag-baltimore-orioles","10":"tag-baltimoreorioles","11":"tag-baseball","12":"tag-breaking","13":"tag-breaking-news-social","14":"tag-charlie","15":"tag-charlie-morton","16":"tag-chris","17":"tag-chris-paddack","18":"tag-detroit","19":"tag-detroit-tigers","20":"tag-mi","21":"tag-mlb","22":"tag-morton","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-orioles","25":"tag-overall","26":"tag-overall-positive","27":"tag-paddack","28":"tag-positive","29":"tag-series","30":"tag-social","31":"tag-sports","32":"tag-sports-news","33":"tag-tigers","34":"tag-world","35":"tag-world-series"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114952274221420466","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}