The Braves Continue to Bet on Charlie Morton

Charlie Morton
Eric Hartline-USA TODAY Sports

Sunday wasn’t Charlie Morton’s best night, though it was hardly his worst. Fresh off the announcement of a contract extension for next season, and with nothing less than the Braves’ full control of their own destiny in the NL East race on the line against the Mets, the 38-year-old righty bent but didn’t break before manager Brian Snitker pulled him with a 4–3 lead and one out in the fifth inning. His performance was still better than opposite number Chris Bassitt, who was chased in the third inning. And for the third straight night, the Braves got home runs from both Dansby Swanson and Matt Olson and a save from Kenley Jansen. Their magic number to clinch the division and the NL’s second seed is down to one.

With victories over Jacob deGrom on Friday and Max Scherzer on Saturday, the Braves had taken a one-game lead in the NL East race — their largest of the season — and evened the season series with the Mets at nine games apiece. A victory on Sunday night meant that they would possess not only a two-game lead with three games left to play but also the upper hand in a tiebreaker scenario via their 10–9 record in head-to-head games. Under the new postseason format, so long as they do anything but lose all three of their remaining games against the Marlins in Miami along with the Mets winning their three against the Nationals at home, the Braves would get a first-round bye and face the winner of the best-of-three Wild Card series between the Cardinals and the sixth seed (currently the Phillies, who have a magic number of one over the Brewers). The fourth-seeded Mets would face the fifth-seeded Padres, with the winner moving on to face the top-seeded Dodgers in the Division Series.

So there was a lot riding on Sunday’s contest, to say the least. As a 15-year veteran who’s pitched for teams that have been to the playoffs in eight of the past nine seasons (plus this one) and who has appeared in three of the past five World Series (most notably closing out Game 7 for the 2017 Astros), Morton is no stranger to big games. It appears that he has more in store, not only because the Braves are playoff-bound but also because on Saturday they announced a one-year, $20 million extension with the righty, with a $20 million club option (and no buyout) for 2024. It’s essentially a rollover of Morton’s previous deal, in that he’s making $20 million this year and had a club option for $20 million next year.

Morton did not have his best stuff, but he made a few crucial pitches when he had to, and weathered nine hits, nine hard-hit balls (95 mph or more), and one walk, striking out five in 4.1 innings. He began with a scoreless but not spotless first inning, extricating himself from a jam — a two-out single by Jeff McNeil and a two-out walk by Pete Alonso — by striking out Eduardo Escobar looking at a curveball on the outer edge of the plate.

Swanson’s solo homer off Bassitt gave Morton a lead to work with, but he quickly surrendered it, falling behind Daniel Vogelbach and then leaving a cutter too high in the zone, which the slugger crushed for a homer to right-center field. Morton gave up two more singles in that inning before striking out Francisco Lindor, who chased a low-and-away curveball. But in the third, a solo homer by McNeil and then a trio of singles by Alonso, Escobar, and Vogelbach ran the Mets’ advantage to 3–1 with runners on the corners and nobody out.

As David Cone put it on the ESPN broadcast, Morton was probably one pitch away from getting pulled by Snitker at that point, but after Austin Riley alertly let a dribbler by Mark Canha roll foul instead of trying to make a play, the pitcher retired the next seven Mets in order before yielding a single to Escobar with one out in the fifth. Meanwhile, the Braves chased Bassitt with a three-run rally sparked by a single by no. 9 hitter Orlando Arcia and capped by a two-run single by Travis d’Arnaud.

With a narrow lead, Snitker pulled Morton after Escobar’s single and called upon Dylan Lee, the first of five Braves relievers who combined for 4.2 shutout innings, with Olson providing an insurance run with his sixth-inning solo homer off Seth Lugo. Jansen, working for the third night in a row, nailed the door shut with a seven-pitch save to give the Braves their 100th win overall (against 59 losses) and their 77th in their 109 games since the start of June. That’s a .706 clip, and half a game better than the Dodgers (77–33, .700) over that same timeframe.

As for Morton, this has not been a banner season for the righty, whose 4.34 ERA, 4.26 FIP, and 4.12 xERA are all his worst full-season marks since 2015, his final season as a Pirate. While he reached the 200-strikeout plateau for the fourth time in as many full seasons and ranks fourth in the league in strikeout rate (28.2%), his 8.7% walk rate is his highest mark since 2018, and his 1.47 homers per nine his highest since ’10 and nearly double last year’s mark of 0.78. This was the first time in his career that he allowed more than 18 homers, and he cleared the fence (er, bar) by 10, with 28; in fact, among NL hurlers, only the Rockies’ Germán Márquez has allowed more. Morton’s 1.5 WAR is one-third of last year’s stellar 4.5, set when he posted a 3.34 ERA and 3.18 FIP in 185.2 innings.

Morton suffered a fractured right fibula at some point during Game 1 of last year’s World Series against the Astros, but while he recovered sufficiently in time to start the Braves’ second game of the regular season, he struggled early, getting lit for a 5.67 ERA and 4.56 FIP in his first 12 starts. That roughly coincided with the Braves’ stumble out of the gate; they were 23–27 through the end of May but won two of Morton’s ugly four-run starts as part of their the 14-game winning streak that turned their season around.

Morton has been better since then (3.63 ERA, 4.10 FIP), but not because he began avoiding the long ball; his home run rates have been pretty consistent across this admittedly arbitrary split, but his BABIP dropped from .333 to .266, and his strikeout rate rose from 24.4% to 30.4%. The BABIP dip may reflect the turnover in the Braves’ lineup, but while Michael Harris II (who debuted on May 28) has been a big upgrade in center, the replacements at second base for Ozzie Albies, who broke his left foot on June 13, have been worse, at least according to the metrics.

Leaving the arbitrary endpoints aside to compare Morton’s so-so 2022 season to his standout ’21 campaign, two areas particularly stand out. First, he’s given up much harder contact, with more balls in the air; second, his four-seam fastball has been much less effective. On the first point, even after making the transition from relying primarily on his sinker (up until he joined the Astros in 2017) to relying more upon his four-seamer, Morton tended to generate a ton of groundballs. From 2008 to ’16, he produced a 55.4% groundball rate and a 2.33 groundball-to-fly-ball ratio. From 2017 to ’21, he was down to a 48.3% groundball rate, still good for a 1.62 GB/FB ratio; within that span, last year’s marks of 47.8% and 1.65 were thoroughly representative. This year, he’s getting grounders on just 39.8% of his batted balls, with a 1.03 GB/FB ratio, both of which are career lows. Note the change in average launch angle:

Charlie Morton Statcast Profile
Season Team Events EV LA Barrel% HardHit% xSLG xERA
2017 HOU 391 85.4 7.0 4.3% 30.2% .357 3.68
2018 HOU 414 87.5 7.6 5.1% 30.9% .326 3.37
2019 TBR 481 86.9 9.2 4.8% 32.8% .337 3.26
2020 TBR 114 89.4 11.7 7.9% 35.1% .384 3.93
2021 ATL 465 88.1 7.7 4.9% 32.5% .332 3.32
2022 ATL 442 89.3 13.6 9.5% 42.1% .389 4.12

As you can see, even during the pandemic season (which for Morton was further shortened by a bout of shoulder inflammation), he hasn’t come close to such a high launch angle before and had never been hit as hard. This year’s average exit velocity places him in the 27th percentile, and his hard-hit and barrel rates are in the 16th and 15th, respectively. He was in the 90th percentile on the last two in 2021, so that’s a pretty precipitous drop.

Morton’s repertoire hasn’t changed dramatically from 2021. He has thrown slightly fewer four-seamers (from 36% to 33.2%) and sinkers (form 13.5% to 10.9%) and has made up some of the difference with more changeups (from 5.3% to 8.6%, after not throwing the pitch at all from 2011 to ’20, according to Statcast). His average velocity on the four-seamer has dropped from 95.5 mph to 94.9, and he’s gone from allowing a .230 AVG and .355 SLG on the pitch to .255 and .469, respectively. Where batters averaged 88 mph and a 13-degree launch angle upon contact with his four-seamer last year, this year he’s up to 90.8 mph and 22 degrees.

A closer look shows that Morton has lost not only velocity on his four-seamer but also considerable horizontal movement, with a decrease from 13 inches of break to 10.5 according to Statcast; leaving 2020 aside, he was in the 13–16-inch range from 2017 to ’19 as well. His average vertical release point for the pitch has dropped from 5.56 feet last year to 5.49 in this one (nearly 7/8″), with a lot of start-to-start inconsistency within, and his average horizontal release point moved from -1.99 feet to -2.28 (3.5 inches towards the third-base side), with some start-to-start inconsistency but a clear point of inflection coinciding with his June 17 start, in which he reversed his early-season troubles with seven shutout innings.

The end result has been a lot of inconsistency in Morton’s horizontal movement, but less of it overall than last year, and a Statcast pitch value that has eroded from -3 runs (prevented three runs more than average) to +7 runs (allowed seven more than average). Morton’s sinker has followed a similar pattern in terms of release points and movements, though it’s gotten slightly better results than last year despite worse expected results and a net two-run improvement in Statcast values (from +4 to +2).

Morton’s curveball has been his best pitch, holding batters to a .171 average and .323 slugging percentage with a 41.8% whiff rate and a -8 run value. That’s very good, but not as good as last year, when he was at a .127 AVG/.187 SLG with a 40.1% whiff rate and a major league-low -22 runs.

As far as the postseason goes, Morton’s decline from 2021 is more than a little worrisome for a Braves rotation. This year’s breakouts by Kyle Wright and Spencer Strider are offset with some concern about the latter’s oblique injury, particularly because he has not yet been cleared to resume throwing, as well as the loss of Ian Anderson. But as far as next year goes, the Braves don’t seem to be worried about Morton, and neither does ZiPS. Here’s the projection from Dan Szymborski:

ZiPS Projection – Charlie Morton
Year W L ERA G GS IP H ER HR BB SO ERA+ WAR
2023 9 6 3.73 29 29 157.0 136 65 17 56 172 114 2.8
2024 8 5 4.05 25 25 133.3 125 60 17 50 139 105 1.9

ZiPS contract estimates call for a one-year, $22 million deal or a two-year, $36.3 million one, so the contract he received is more or less in line with that. All told, it’s clear that the Braves and Morton have a comfort level with each other, and while they’d certainly benefit from a more effective version of him as they defend their championship, they’re ready to take what they can get from him.





Brooklyn-based Jay Jaffe is a senior writer for FanGraphs, the author of The Cooperstown Casebook (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017) and the creator of the JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score) metric for Hall of Fame analysis. He founded the Futility Infielder website (2001), was a columnist for Baseball Prospectus (2005-2012) and a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated (2012-2018). He has been a recurring guest on MLB Network and a member of the BBWAA since 2011, and a Hall of Fame voter since 2021. Follow him on Twitter @jay_jaffe... and BlueSky @jayjaffe.bsky.social.

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kylerkelton
1 year ago

Braves bullpen was awesome in this series. I think Dylan Lee especially deserves a shout-out. Not a household name, but he’s been excellent this season. Also Uncle Jesse Chavez just keeps getting outs for the Braves.