After shedding beginning pitcher Corbin Burnes in free company, the Baltimore Orioles wanted to seek out some kind 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 most likely not the kind of transfer — or offseason — that Orioles followers had been hoping for.
By itself, there may be nothing fallacious with including Morton on a one-year deal.
There may be comparatively little threat, the worth might be proper, and although Morton is coming into his age-41 season, he’s nonetheless a great innings-eater who can no less than be a strong center of the rotation starter.
It is effective. Nevertheless it’s solely that — effective. 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 — probably the greatest pitchers in baseball — to free company.
Perhaps retaining Burnes was not a practical choice given his personal free-agency needs and needs. However there have been loads of different top-end starters obtainable, 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 group with rising stars all around the lineup, and eventually escaped the Angelos period of possession that constantly held the group again.
The offseason has consisted of them shedding Burnes, probably shedding Anthony Santander, and changing them with Tyler O’Neill, 35-year-old Tomoyuki Sugano and now Morton.
Neither Sugano nor Morton will probably be an improve on Burnes, and for nearly as good as O’Neill was for the Boston Pink 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 count on from a group that is gained 192 video games over the previous two seasons and needs to be coming into its prime window for World Sequence rivalry.
This was imagined 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.