The 2025 Battery Power player reviews kicks-off with the record-breaking 71st player to take the field for the Atlanta Braves this past season: Charlie Morton. It was an unexpected-at-times reunion and
an emotional sendoff for one of this Braves era’s most important pitchers, and a bit of connective tissue to the Braves teams of yesteryear.
The Braves visited the Detroit Tigers for their final road series of the year, with Atlanta’s season moribund and Detroit desperately trying to hang on to a playoff spot. The first game of the series was a Friday night game and Atlanta absolutely rocked Detroit’s starting pitcher — whom they acquired in a Trade Deadline deal. That set off a chain of events that led to one of the emotional high points of Atlanta’s 2025 campaign, which have to be a substitute for actual high points, since there weren’t too many of those.
How acquired
After getting charged with six runs while getting just four outs against Atlanta on that Friday night, Detroit designated Charlie Morton for assignment. Two days later, the Tigers released him.
The day following his release, Morton was back with Atlanta for the third and, likely, final time. Debuting for the Braves in 2008, Tom Glavine’s last MLB season, Morton returned to the organization for a second time in 2021 before leaving via free agency after the 2024 campaign.
What were the expectations?
Heading into the 2025 season, Morton signed a free agent deal with the Baltimore Orioles to fill a spot in their starting rotation for a team that looked to be a contender in the American League. Staving off retirement for at least one more season, Morton’s departure brought an end to a four-year return engagement with Atlanta for the former third round pick of the 2002 draft by the Braves.
The 2025 season didn’t go as planned for neither the Orioles nor Morton, as both struggled out of the gate. Baltimore had an early seasonal collapse that was unexpected and brutal, though not as disappointing as the Braves’ season ultimately ended up being. Morton was a part of that early, with a 270/159/134 (ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-) line through his first five starts as an Oriole. He then ended up working as a swingman for about three weeks where things got better, even if his HR/FB rate didn’t (110/128/100), and then really hit his stride in a return to a rotation role, posting a solid 96/100/99 line over 11 starts.
For the season, Morton signed a $15 million, one-year deal with Baltimore, suggesting that expectations were that he’d be a mid-rotation starter or something akin to a reliable number four. Morton had put up 5.2 fWAR over his past 91 starts spanning three seasons, suggesting a high degree of durability and potential for above-average performance assuming he got the homers under control, which he hadn’t managed to do in two of the past three seasons. By the time the Braves got him, the expectations were pretty much just a last hurrah with no strings attached.
2025 results
On the whole, 2025 was probably Morton’s worst season in 15 years, though at least he stayed barely above replacement while collecting 0.3 fWAR. His final line was 144/120/105 — that xFIP- seems exactly in line with what he was paid, but unfortunately, he ran/was cursed with an overly high HR/FB for the third time in four seasons. (Only two pitchers with more innings than Morton also had a higher HR/FB.)
He posted his lowest strikeout rate since his final season with the Pirates back in 2015, and just his second double-digit walk rate season since his renaissance in Houston.
What went right?
The course correction after returning to the rotation in Baltimore was quite welcome, and showed that he could still, at times, pitch at a reasonable caliber. He then kept it going in Detroit, until he didn’t.
Back with Atlanta, the final strikeout of his season (career?) was on a signature curveball. Morton then handed the ball to fellow starter Chris Sale, who had given Morton his turn in the rotation, before walking off the field to a standing ovation. With his family in the stands, it was a lovely acknowledgement of his career — all 18 seasons, twists and turns and all.
What went wrong?
A lot didn’t go well for Morton this past season. No one likes being the guy with the nearly-highest-in-MLB HR/FB rate, it’s even worse when fate decides you also need to get murdered by BABIP (4.62 xERA compared to 5.83 ERA) and tickled by sequencing in the same season.
As a result, Morton was charged with five earned runs or more eight times — including seven runs twice. He pitched so poorly for Baltimore that he lost his rotation spot after five starts. After those promising first starts with the Tigers, he regressed to the point of being released with less than a week to go in the regular season.
While his curve ball spin rate was still elite — in the 98th percentile per Baseball Savant — his overall effectiveness remained in decline. After dropping his arm angle after the 2021 season, his effectiveness waned, and this year his fastball was ugly, with a -14 run value, though some of that has to do with HR/FB and BABIP stuff more than Morton himself.
Using Fangraph’s Stuff+ model, it was Morton’s ability to locate his pitches that was a bigger issue than the quality of his stuff. Overall, his stuff is still league average — his curveball is still best pitch — but his location has been below average. That’s not a new-for-2025 issue as he’s put up similar metrics going back to 2023. If you look at 2021, his last unequivocally great season, Morton’s fastball command was relatively pinpoint, and the curveball largely hit the corner. From 2022-onward, it got substantially worse, at times forcing him to rely on pitches beyond the fastball/curve combo (with varying results); 2025 actually saw an improvement in curveball command but the fastball was a mess once again.
2026 outlook
Was this the last ride for Morton? As of this writing, he hasn’t outright said he is hanging up his spikes, but he has intimated as much going back to the beginning of this season. It has been a year-by-year evaluation for Morton for some time, as he has talked about retirement going back to last decade.
Chances are that no one would offer him near the $15 million he got last season, but his curveball is still effective, and while the results haven’t been there consistently, he’s taken the ball every fifth day. He’s pitched in 142 or more innings in every non-shortened season going back to 2017, when he was 33.
He’s made more than $150 million in his career, so the money might not be a deciding factor, but if the yearning is still there and if someone offered to give him $5 million in 2026, would he take it? Despite heading into what would be his age-42 season, and his unfortunate 2025, he’s still projected as a 1+ WAR swingman… but it seems unlikely that he’d be interested in playing for a team that wanted to roll the dice in that fashion.
If not, and this season was it, what a fitting way for Morton to go out.
His career exemplifies the positive side of perseverance and determination, as well as changing things up to reach new heights. It has been a wonderful career for a pitcher who was better in the last decade of his career than he was in his first.
