The Tigers will be moving Troy Melton to the bullpen, but the rotation still looks significantly worse than it did a week ago.
Ultimately, the Detroit Tigers did little of consequence at the trade deadline, despite holding a huge lead in the division and watching just about every other contender make a push. They built up depth in areas of weakness, but didn’t land any notably impactful players. We’ll have to grapple with that and what it says about Scott Harris going forward in the days to come.
Before the deadline hit, they did make one more trade, and it’s kind of a strange one, and yes, no more costly than the rest of the bargain bin shopping and salary dumps the Tigers accumulated today.
Veteran right-handed starter Charlie Morton was the final move of the day. The Tigers dealt an interesting, but not particularly notable left-handed relief prospect in Micah Ashman to Baltimore for the privilege of taking on the remainder of the 41-year-old’s $15M one-year contract.
Unlike the acquisition of Chris Paddack to shore up a rotation that just lost Reese Olson and the collection of middle relief types they picked up on Thursday, the Morton acquisition doesn’t really compute for me. However, it cost them very little.
Right now, it’s Tarik Skubal, Jack Flaherty, Casey Mize, Chris Paddack, and rookie Troy Melton in the rotation. I’ve expected all along that Melton would move to the bullpen in late September and for the postseason, in part because of his innings limitations as a young pitcher, but also because he does make for quite a weapon out of the pen. That doesn’t require bumping him to the pen right now, but Melton to the bullpen along with decent acquisitions in Kyle Finnegan, Paul Sewald, and Rafael Montero, is Harris’ idea of building up the pen for the postseason and they should certainly be better for it.
The Tigers acquired Charlie Morton to be a starter.
Scott Harris said Troy Melton is moving to the bullpen.
— Evan Woodbery (@evanwoodbery) July 31, 2025
Of course, the rotation looks a good deal weaker than it did a few days ago too. With a 9.5 game lead in the division, and without a need for a full five-man rotation in the postseason, it probably won’t hurt the Tigers much in their quest for the AL Central crown, particularly with the Guardians losing Emmanuel Clase for a while at least, and the Twins going pretty close to scorched Earth on their roster in a major teardown.
It’s also possible that Morton just fills a gap until Sawyer Gipson-Long is ready to return, or in the case of Jose Urquidy making it back in September. This is all just depth building work in the end.
Morton holds a 5.42 ERA and a 4.84 FIP for the Baltimore Orioles across 17 starts and 101 1⁄3 innings this season. The once great strikeout touch has aged into just a pedestrian strikeout rate, and Morton has given up walks and homers to a degree rarely seen in his career.
He was actually pitching pretty well in May and June, but has crumbled in July. That’s kind of how you expect it to go with a 41-year-old starting pitcher. Finishing strong is even tougher than just trying to hold up to the workload of a starter in general this late in his career.
It’s very hard to see Morton being effective the rest of the way, but perhaps Sawyer Gipson-Long or Jose Urquidy can handle some starts down the stretch if Morton can’t turn things around. Alex Cobb would seem to be a non-factor.
As you’d expect from a Harris trade, the return to Baltimore is pretty negligible. Micah Ashman is having a great year and has a sneaky fastball that hitters at High-A really struggled to pick up this year, but his best-case outcome is probably as a middle reliever.
In other news, after designating Matt Manning for assignment earlier in the day, the Tigers dealt him to the Philadelphia Phillies for 18-year-old outfielder Josueth Quinonez, who is currently playing in the DSL and showing pretty good contact ability for that level.
We’ll step back and have plenty of thoughts on everything the Tigers did and didn’t do over the past few days coming shortly.