Tigers literally traded for Charlie Morton just to give him proper retirement moment

The Detroit Tigers acquired veteran pitcher Charlie Morton from the Baltimore Orioles at the trade deadline to bolster their postseason push. However, as their second half went up in flames, the right-hander hurt their efforts more than he helped.

After four solid starts, Morton's brief tenure with the Tigers took a disastrous turn, and he didn't last longer than four innings in any of his final four outings with Detroit. His command all but disappeared, and he walked 19.7% of batters he faced while pitching to a 12.75 ERA during that span. In his final outing against the Atlanta Braves on Friday, he didn't make it out of the second inning and was booed off the field.

That seemed to be the final straw for the Tigers, who cut Morton loose two days later. But with just one week remaining in the regular season, the 41-year-old has already landed back in a familiar place – in Atlanta, where he became a postseason hero in 2021, nearly two decades after the Braves drafted him.

Tigers discarding Charlie Morton allows him to have proper send-off into retirement

After Morton was released by the Tigers, the Braves signed him to a Major League contract for purely sentimental reasons. They are already out of the playoff hunt, and manager Brian Snitker admitted that he's not even sure whether Morton will pitch in a game during the final week of the season.

Morton hasn't actually said whether he's retiring after this season, but it certainly seems plausible now that he has ended up back with the club that drafted him and where he previously enjoyed a great deal of success.

The Braves drafted Morton out of high school in 2002, and he debuted for them in 2008. He bounced around to the Pittsburgh Pirates, Houston Astros and Tampa Bay Rays before returning to Atlanta from 2021-24. He made at least 30 starts in each of his last four seasons with the Braves, pitching to a 3.87 ERA over 686 1/3 total innings in his two stints with the club.

Now, Morton is back in Atlanta for a third (and likely final) time. If this really is the end of the road for him, his return to the Braves allows him the opportunity to receive a full-circle send-off into retirement – one that overwrites his most recent appearance with the Tigers. And the Tigers made that possible by making a number of ill-advised trade deadline moves.