Charlie Morton remembers the sound as much as the feeling. He was warming up in the bullpen at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, California. Suddenly, near his right ear, he heard the familiar zip as his finger brushed the seam of the baseball just right, sending it spinning toward the plate in a way he has spun it for over a decade.

That pitch is an integral piece of Morton’s repertoire. It is the linchpin of his attack plan. The offering has prolonged Morton’s career, sparking a blossoming that ensured there was a market for him at 41 to pitch in the majors.

Only, for the first five starts of his tenure with the Orioles, that zip didn’t sound the way it ought to.

“It felt like I was doing everything right,” Morton said, “but when I went to step on it and release the ball, the ball was going somewhere completely different than the way it felt like it should be.”

When he thinks back on the fix that resurrected his season and made Morton a suddenly enticing trade chip ahead of the deadline, it was relatively simple. He racked his brain for answers, then realized in his bullpen session in Anaheim that the issues had less to do with his grip or arm movement than with his leg.

His right leg pushes off the rubber and creates torque and power for his pitches, building through his foot, leg, hip and core, all the way to his right arm and hand. It’s also a timing mechanism. And, for much of the early portion of the season, his timing was off.

Then in Anaheim, Morton emphasized keeping his weight back longer before rifling forward — allowing his arm more time to swing forward.

“Let it relax,” Morton told himself. “Because that’s honestly probably a big part of what makes me me. I’m all floppy and loose. And I felt it, and I can actually hear it. I can hear my finger when my finger catches the seam. And then I saw it in the bullpen and I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, that was it.’”

His curveball, just like that, was back.

“There have been times where I literally just forget my cues,” Morton said, and one of those cues is the weight distribution in his right hip, sitting there for a heartbeat before driving toward home plate. “It’s feedback. It’s not necessarily something in my head telling me to stay back or telling me to get my arm up on time. It’s a feeling.”

On May 10 at Angel Stadium, Morton pitched two scoreless innings in relief. It was the beginning of a revitalized effort that has elevated him into the role of stabilizer once more, as he has been for much of his career.

“If you let it [failure] push you to quitting, or giving in, you let it win.”

Orioles pitcher Charlie Morton

Since that relief appearance, Morton holds a 3.53 ERA. That form is part of what makes him an interesting deadline proposition — on top of his clubhouse presence and postseason experience, he’s a reliable arm for the final two months of the regular season. And Tuesday could mark his final appearance for the club, only half a year after Morton signed a $15 million contract last winter.

If he is moved before Thursday’s deadline, that May 10 bullpen will stand out as a demarcation line. After it, Morton is proud of the way he recovered. Before it, particularly his first five starts, leaves a bitter taste.

He doesn’t shy away from the fact his 10.89 ERA after five starts played a role in why manager Brandon Hyde was fired and the Orioles find themselves as sellers. So if Morton is dealt — if Tuesday is the end of a short Orioles career — he will feel guilt.

“I’m not really sure when I look back how I’m going to feel about it, other than the fact this group in here is capable of a lot more than this,” Morton said. “And the part that I played in that momentum going in the wrong direction, that’s what troubles me the most. But it wasn’t for a lack of preparation. It wasn’t for a lack of trying. It wasn’t for a lack of caring or for a lack of buying in or anything like that.”

One would be hard-pressed to accuse Morton of anything of the sort. There’s a reason his professional career has spanned two decades. But, because of how long Morton’s career has lasted, he has been supremely aware of how it could all end suddenly for years.

He remembers thinking of the eventuality in his mid-30s. But then Morton pitched for two World Series winners over the age of 35. Not many players have such late-career success. So, long before the five poor starts that opened his 2025 season, Morton began soaking in each day as a major leaguer.

“Shoot, the season I had in ’21, I was 37,” Morton said of a year in which he threw 185 2/3 innings with a 3.34 ERA. “I look back and it seems like such a long time ago, and I wasn’t a young dude. So I think, even preceding that, I started thinking about the end being one pitch away, one start away, just ’cause my body, I guess the odds are stacked against me.”

Still, when his season started poorly, Morton brushed aside thoughts of hanging it up. He still felt he could do this. He believed in his curveball.

“I’m five starts in — which is like, what, 1% of every start I’ve ever made?” Morton said. “I’m sitting there thinking. But, when you actually think about it objectively and rationally, that’s the danger of failure and then letting it consume you, because that goes against what you know to work. If you let it push you to quitting, or giving in, you let it win. That flies in the face of all the logic and all the lessons that you’ve learned over two decades of playing professional sports. You just don’t do that.

“In a vacuum, it was never going to be like, I’m shutting it down,” Morton continued. “But it’s not a vacuum. It’s a team, and an organization, and a fan base, and it’s guys who are sitting in Double-A and Triple-A trying to get a shot. It’s not a vacuum. But in my heart I wasn’t ready to just be like, I’m quitting, because it’s uncomfortable for me.”

At the time, opponents were hitting around .400 against Morton’s curveball with a 1.000 OPS, “something just absolutely ridiculous,” he said. Since then, since he heard the zip as the curveball left his hand in the Angel Stadium bullpen, Morton has looked more like himself.

There may well be another team that can benefit from Morton’s turnaround more. If he’s dealt, regret may well be the lingering emotion of his 2025 Orioles experience.

“I know I let a lot of people down, and I know that it was difficult and it caused, I’m sure in large part, a lot of the difficulty that has happened with the team,” Morton said. “And, through that, I think you do create a deeper bond with the guys in the room, if you let yourself. Because the failures and the difficulties, when you actually start to have those conversations and you start to look people in the face and look them in the eye and you figure out who you are as a group, you start to realize, ‘Wow, this is a really good group, and we’re capable of so much more.’”

At least this year, this group couldn’t achieve it.