{"id":2753,"date":"2016-12-22T14:19:01","date_gmt":"2016-12-22T19:19:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonbaseball.com\/?p=2753"},"modified":"2016-12-22T14:19:01","modified_gmt":"2016-12-22T19:19:01","slug":"charlie-morton-joins-houston-astros","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2016\/12\/22\/charlie-morton-joins-houston-astros\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlie Morton Joins Houston Astros"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <b>Houston Astros<\/b>, in need of upgrades to their starting rotation, made a move to lock down the back end on Thursday. According to <b>Ken Rosenthal<\/b> of <b>FOX Sports<\/b>, the Astros have agree to a two-year, $14 million deal with free agent starter <b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/search\/search.fcgi?results=mortoch02,mortoch01&amp;search=Charlie+Morton&amp;utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Charlie Morton<\/a><\/b>. The contract also includes up to $5 million in performance incentives.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Source: Morton deal with <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Astros?src=hash\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#Astros<\/a> is two years, $14M.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Ken_Rosenthal\/status\/798906507182166017\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">November 16, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Morton deal with <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Astros?src=hash\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#Astros<\/a> also includes incentives of $625K each at 15, 20, 25 and 30 starts each year.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Ken_Rosenthal\/status\/798906733783556096\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">November 16, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2><b>Charlie Morton Joins Houston Astros<\/b><\/h2>\n<p>The 33-year-old righty first broke into the big leagues with the <b>Atlanta Braves<\/b> in 2008, but has spent the vast majority of his career with the <b>Pittsburgh Pirates<\/b>. Last season, he pitched for the <b>Philadelphia Phillies<\/b>. Though never spectacular, Morton has at least been solid in his time as a <b>MLB<\/b> starter. His lifetime 4.54 ERA won&#8217;t turn any heads, but he has had some good years.<\/p>\n<p>His strongest campaigns came in two consecutive seasons for the Pirates. In 2013, he recorded a career-best 3.26 ERA in 20 starts. The next year, he set personal records in WHIP (1.27) and strikeouts (126). He also had a good season back in 2011, when he recorded a 3.83 ERA while pitching 171.2 innings and winning 10 games, both career-highs.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, with the Phillies, Morton made just four starts before a torn hamstring ended his season. In that limited action, Morton pitched to a 4.15 ERA with 19 strikeouts. If he returns to full health and limits his free passes, Morton could be a solid fifth starter for the Astros. An ERA hovering around 4.00 will get the job done. At the very least, Morton represents depth, which in never a bad thing to have. The Astros are looling to challenge the <b>Texas Rangers<\/b> for the <b>AL West<\/b> title next season. Morton won&#8217;t make the difference in that fight, but his presence won&#8217;t hurt, either.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo:<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/525262214\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 66.666667% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/525262214?et=v1KxV2uxSMB0S01PwoEMbQ&amp;viewMoreLink=off&amp;sig=2MNlKf3erLy7oA1Sb2XzBFOG_Qws8uoTSmXxJReBqAE=&amp;caption=true\" width=\"594\" height=\"396\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"margin: 0;\">\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Houston Astros, in need of upgrades to their starting rotation, made a move to lock down the back end on Thursday. According to Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports, the Astros have agree to a two-year, $14 million deal with free agent starter Charlie Morton. The contract also includes up to $5 million in performance [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":807,"featured_media":2754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14,35],"tags":[68,833,246,69],"class_list":["post-2753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-astros","category-news","tag-baseball","tag-charlie-morton","tag-houston-astros","tag-mlb"],"modified_by":"Josh Greenberg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/807"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}