SARASOTA, Fla. — Charlie Morton openly ponders it, because, at 41, it’s no state secret. Should he still be pitching? Or should he hang it up and head home to be with his wife and four children?

That has been a conversation between him and his wife, Cindy, each of the past few winters. But, when his phone vibrates and his agents tell him all the teams that are still interested in the right-handed starter’s services, he feels the pull to don a uniform, to continue a major league journey that began in 2008.

That journey has taken Morton through the gamut of what it’s like to be a baseball player. He has won two World Series titles, one with the Houston Astros and another with the Atlanta Braves. He has received Cy Young Award votes. He has battled to keep his spot in the rotation, been hit around, forced to adapt.

This winter, an oddity occurred. When he signed a one-year, $15 million contract with the Orioles, his average annual value lined up almost perfectly with Justin Verlander’s and Max Scherzer’s, two other members of the over-40 club who are still producing in the majors.

Does that mean Morton is in the same echelon as those two?

No. It’s more complicated than that.

Follow Morton down Memory Lane and you’ll see. As he describes it, Morton has been everything — a journeyman struggling to keep his position, a Game 1 starter in the World Series.

“I figured out how to be elite in a smaller window later in my career,” Morton said, “and to be more resilient, to figure out how to keep going when things weren’t going my way and to adapt.”

From 2008, when a 24-year-old Morton made his debut for the Braves, through 2024, Morton has thrown 2,125 2/3 innings in the majors — the 14th most in that time. He can be listed in the same sentence as Madison Bumgarner (2,209 1/3), Adam Wainwright (2,389 1/3), Clayton Kershaw (2,742 2/3) and Scherzer (2,878) when it comes to workload and longevity, but Morton acknowledges that is where the comparison ends.

He’s a two-time All-Star, but of the top 14 pitchers in order of innings pitched since 2008, Morton is the only one with a career ERA over 4.00. Jon Lester and Cole Hamels are second to last in that group with 15 career complete games — Morton has three. Morton has managed 174 quality starts — throwing at least six innings with three earned runs or fewer — while only one of the 13 pitchers above him on that list has thrown under 200 (Hall of Famer CC Sabathia, with 187).

Among those pitchers who have thrown as much or more than Morton are several Hall of Famers, multiple Cy Young winners, perennial All-Stars and aces, and pitchers who have been cornerstone pieces of organizations on long-term deals.

Where does Morton see himself in that group?

“I was never that guy for any sustained period of time,” Morton said. “You know, five, six, seven years. It was more, I got windows into it, which I think is pretty cool. It allows me to have a different perspective, I think. But it’s also one of the reasons I still play, because I think if my career arc had been — if I had utilized my physical ability earlier, had really dialed in my delivery and what I needed to do to maximize my body, I think my career arc would be different. I’m not sure I would be playing still.”

But Morton is playing still, partly because he feels as though quitting now would be to give up on some of the most sustained success of his career.

He has a Benjamin Button-esque career path, with early struggles and late triumphs. Through the first five years of his career between the Braves and Pittsburgh Pirates, Morton combined to hold a 5.06 ERA and was a below-average player, earning minus-1.1 wins above replacement, per Baseball Reference.

By the time he was 31, when most starting pitchers who are bound for the kind of longevity Morton has found are receiving mega deals in free agency, he pitched to a 4.81 ERA in Pittsburgh. Then, at 32, his lone season with the Philadelphia Phillies was cut short by an April 2016 hamstring surgery.

That could’ve been it. At that point, he was a serviceable arm averaging 99 innings per season with a 4.54 career ERA. But then the Astros called.

“The Astros took a bet on me because they saw what was coming out of my hand in 2016 with the Phillies,” Morton said. “‘If we can kind of turn the dial up on a couple pitches, we might see something different.’ Sure enough, it happened.”

Morton recorded a 3.62 ERA in 146 2/3 innings in 2017, and he closed out Game 7 of the World Series for Houston. It was the beginning of a late-career blossoming built on improved mechanics and an altered pitch mix, which saw him shift from being a sinker-heavy arm to a curveball-first thrower.

Over his next eight seasons, Morton posted a 3.64 ERA and 20.3 wins above replacement. He has started at least 30 games each of the past four years.

Still, while other pitchers who have thrown as many or more innings than Morton since 2008 found stability in long, high-yield contracts, the reality was different for Morton. The longest deal he signed was for three years worth $21 million with the Pirates, but he didn’t finish that contract in Pittsburgh.

Even as he found more success, Morton became a journeyman. He signed for two years and $14 million with the Astros. He joined the Tampa Bay Rays for two years and $30 million. He signed a trio of short-term deals with the Braves. What he lacked in stability, he gained in perseverance.

“I think it forces you to adapt,” Morton said. “It forces you to be a little uncomfortable and feel like you have to earn your spot on that team. There are definitely benefits to it.”

There are also detriments.

“The Braves, for example, if I knew I was going to be there for four years, we might’ve bought [a house],” Morton said. “We might’ve moved my family there. We might be living in Atlanta right now.”

The short-term deals, however, allowed Morton to be selective.

“I never wanted to seek the top dollar just for any team,” Morton continued. “I wanted to be in a specific kind of room, in a physical location more regional, local, as far as a flight. I always wanted to be around two, under two-hour flight. I always wanted spring training to be close to home. I was always willing to take less money to do that.”

That’s part of the reason Morton joins the Orioles now as a rotation stabilizer. He lives in Bradenton, Florida, just north of the Orioles’ Sarasota spring training facility. His parents are on the East Coast and can watch him pitch in person more frequently. And he had enough of a market this winter that he could be choosy.

Morton won’t be the ace in Baltimore — nor does he need to be. But, for a rotation that lost Corbin Burnes and expects young pitchers such as Grayson Rodriguez to take the next step, the perspective from Morton could be valuable. Still, even to be pitching as a 41-year-old is a reminder of how long it took Morton to find that form, and it underscores his unusual career path.

“If I’m good enough in my mid-30s, I probably would’ve been good enough in my late 20s, and I think that’s the most frustrating part,” Morton said. “But I think, when I look back, I know I wouldn’t have experienced things the way I did, and the only regret I have honestly is the fact that maybe my career arc would’ve let me — if not encouraged me — to retire sooner and be with my family at a younger age.

“Because I think there was something in me that still wanted to experience what I could be, and I was chasing that. … But I look back and that’s something I think I would’ve liked — to be able to choose that earlier. If I kept playing, I kept playing. But I think the late success kind of dictated that more than I would’ve liked it to have.”

Why stop now, Morton feels, if his career is finally taking off? The first nine years in the majors were a roller coaster. At times, he said, his instructions while pitching for the Pirates were simply to force the batter to put the ball in play within three pitches — no fancy stuff, no big-time expectations. Just eat innings.

Later, though, expectations mounted. He thinks of the postseason games he pitched in, including four World Series games. He thinks of the final four innings he covered in 2017, and how Brian McCann nearly knocked him over with a hug upon the final out of that championship. He thinks of walking off the mound one last time for the Braves last year and how that felt incomplete — a chapter, not a career, coming to a close.

That’s why Morton is still here, in Baltimore’s clubhouse, the elder statesman who was drafted before some of his teammates in Sarasota were even born. In terms of longevity, he matches some of the best pitchers ever to do it. In terms of persistence, to continue when success was hard to find, he might be in a league of his own.

“I think my usefulness as a teammate and my perspective is more valuable as someone who has figured out how to be a big leaguer in multiple ways,” Morton said.