A team reunion a little further south down I-95
You may have noticed that the Baltimore Orioles have signed elder statesman Charlie Morton for their starting rotation. The Orioles are in desperate need for starting pitching, but they opted not to resign Corbin Burnes or really to make any splash move whatsoever. Morton joins a rotation that is currently fronted by former Phillie Zach Eflin.
Now if you’re a real sicko, those two names next to each other should be words that awaken a sleeper agent. For the non-damaged people out there, you may have forgotten that Morton and Eflin were teammates once before on the 2016 Phillies. In fact, they aren’t the only members of that team to find their way to Baltimore in 2025. You may remember, or perhaps you suppressed the memory, that Cody Asche and Tommy Joseph played a combined 178 games for those 2016 Phillies. Those two are now in the Orioles dugout as hitting coaches, charged with shepherding the young superstar hitters in the Baltimore lineup.
How did we get here?
2016 was Eflin’s first year in the Majors. It didn’t go well, as he logged a 5.54 ERA across 11 starts. His MLB debut made history for all the wrong reasons, as he lasted just 2.2 innings in Toronto and allowed 9 runs. Kevin Pillar, Ezequiel Carrera, and Josh Donaldson all took Eflin deep with Donaldson launching a grand slam. Edwin Encarnacion then doubled to deliver the knockout blow, with Brett Oberholtzer replacing Eflin in a 9-0 game.
Despite his infamous debut, Eflin went on to have a solid Phillies career and played a key role in the 2022 pennant run as a converted closer. He then signed the largest free agent contract in Tampa Bay Rays history (3 yr, $40M) and was traded to Baltimore at the 2024 trade deadline. Eflin excelled in 9 post-trade starts with the Orioles, posting a 2.60 ERA in 9 regular season starts and pitched 4 innings of one run ball in a Wild Card Series loss. Eflin would likely slot in as the Orioles number one starter if the season started today.
Morton’s Phillies tenure was short and a case of missed opportunity. Then GM Matt Klentak correctly identified that there was more to Morton to unlock and traded for the 32-year-old righty in December of 2015. However, Morton would make only 4 starts with the Phillies and pitch 17.1 innings before blowing out his hamstring running to first on April 23rd. Morton remained on the injured list the rest of the year and would never throw another pitch for the Phillies.
The following season, Morton signed with the Astros and that extra gear that the Phillies believed was there was found, as Morton started 55 games for the Astros over two seasons with a 3.36 ERA while becoming a first time All-Star and winning a World Series.
Fast forward to today, and the 41-year-old Morton is not much more than an expensive league average starter. He made 30 starts for the Braves in 2024 with a 4.19 ERA and allowed 23 home runs in 165.1 IP.
Tommy Joseph’s time with the Phillies organization is a storied one, as he was the top prospect acquired in the Hunter Pence trade that sent the fan favorite right fielder to San Francisco in 2012, barely a year after he was acquired from Houston. Joseph was a star catching prospect but was forced to move out from behind the plate in 2015 due to multiple concussions. Pence went on to win two championships with the Giants while Joseph was best known for the reason Rhys Hoskins played 30 games in left field his rookie season of 2017.
Joseph actually had a solid season at the plate in 2016, hitting 21 home runs with a respectable .813 OPS in 107 games, but his poor defense limited him to just 0.5 WAR. He would play one more season in the Majors with the Phillies before spending the final years of his career splitting time between the Minor Leagues, the KBO, and the independent leagues. Joseph is the only player in MLB history to play two seasons in MLB, hit at least 20 HR in each, and never play in the Majors again.
Joseph started his coaching career with the Mets organization in 2021 and was given his first MLB coaching job in 2024 with the Mariners. In Joseph’s one season as assistant hitting coach in Seattle before being hired in Baltimore, the Mariners offense ranked 21st in scoring and 22nd in OPS.
Asche was one of the Phillies “best” prospects at a time when their “best” were still among the worst in baseball. Nevertheless, Asche was promoted to the Majors in 2013 and was of course immediately compared to Chase Utley due to being a white left-handed infielder. But Asche never came close to reaching even a fraction of that “potential”, as he finished his four-year Phillies career with -1.0 WAR and a .684 OPS. 2016 was his worst year in Philadelphia, and subsequently, his last. Asche played 71 games mostly in left field as more regarded 3B prospect Maikel Franco was promoted full time in 2015. The 26-year-old Asche hit .213 with a .635 OPS and accumulated -0.8 WAR. He was DFA’d following the season and would appear in 19 games with the White Sox in 2017 before bouncing around the Minors until 2021.
The Phillies were actually the first ones to give Asche a coaching job, hiring him as hitting coach for the Clearwater Threshers in 2021 where he mentored the likes of Johan Rojas, Carlos De La Cruz, and Simon Muzziotti. Asche then joined the Orioles as an upper level hitting coordinator in 2022 before being promoted officially to the MLB staff in 2023. 2025 will be his first season as the full-time hitting coach, partnering with his former teammate in Tommy Joseph.