After shedding beginning pitcher Corbin Burnes in free company, the Baltimore Orioles wanted to search out some form of a alternative this offseason.
They did that on Friday by signing veteran starter, and two-time All-Star, Charlie Morton to a one-year contract value $15 million.
It’s in all probability not the kind of transfer — or offseason — that Orioles followers had been hoping for.
By itself, there’s nothing flawed with including Morton on a one-year deal.
There may be comparatively little danger, the worth might be proper, and though Morton is getting into his age-41 season, he’s nonetheless a very good innings-eater who can not less than be a stable center of the rotation starter.
It is nice. Nevertheless it’s solely that — nice. It isn’t one thing that may transfer the needle in a significant approach for the Orioles, and it doesn’t improve the rotation after shedding Burnes — among the finest pitchers in baseball — to free company.
Perhaps retaining Burnes was not a sensible choice given his personal free-agency wishes and needs. However there have been loads of different top-end starters out there, whether or not it’s Max Fried or Blake Snell in free company or Garrett Crochet in a commerce, and the Orioles missed out all on of them.
Orioles followers ought to have entered this offseason with sky-high expectations. They’ve an important younger crew with rising stars all around the lineup, and eventually escaped the Angelos period of possession that persistently held the crew again.
The offseason has consisted of them shedding Burnes, seemingly shedding Anthony Santander, and changing them with Tyler O’Neill, 35-year-old Tomoyuki Sugano and now Morton.
Neither Sugano nor Morton shall be an improve on Burnes, and for nearly as good as O’Neill was for the Boston Purple Sox in 2024, there’s a excellent likelihood that season was an outlier that he could not duplicate.
None of that improves the Orioles, and none of it exhibits the kind of urgency you’d anticipate from a crew that is gained 192 video games over the previous two seasons and must be getting into its prime window for World Collection rivalry.
This was presupposed to be an thrilling, new period for the Orioles. As a substitute, it appears to simply be extra of the identical the place they take half-measures towards rivalry.
