Coming off a 2020 season in which rookies made 22 of the team's 60 regular-season and seven of its 12 postseason starts, the Atlanta Braves moved quickly to add some experience their starting rotation, including on Tuesday signing 37-year-old Charlie Morton to a one-year, $15 million contract. Previously, the team signed 31-year-old Drew Smyly to a one-year, $11 million contract on Nov. 16.
Morton is the more significant addition for fantasy baseball purposes, after the right-hander enjoyed SP27 (2017), SP19 (2018) and SP8 (2019) finishes on the ESPN Player Rater in his first three seasons in the American League. A shoulder injury that cost him a 21-day stay on the injured list, a limited workload averaging 73.3 pitches per start and a bloated .355 BABIP caused him to slide to SP119 last season.
In order to recapture his former top-20 fantasy starter form, he'll need to regain some of the velocity lost on his four-seam fastball -- he averaged 94.7 mph with it in 2019, which in itself was down slightly from his two years with the Houston Astros, but only 93.4 mph with it in the 2020 regular season -- and the break on his curveball. That's not an unreasonable ask, though, especially considering he averaged 95.0 with his four-seamer, saw nearly 100 RPMs of spin on his curve and posted a 0.82 ERA and 48.1% strikeout rate in his four postseason starts in 2020.
In Atlanta, there are two slight concerns that could prevent him from an easy leap back into the position's top 20: The first is his departure from Tampa Bay's Tropicana Field, one of the most pitching-friendly environments in all of baseball. While I haven't yet calculated -- or even decided how I want to approach for the microscopic-by-comparison sample size -- park factors for 2020, the 2017-19 park-factor data placed The Trop 23rd in run scoring and 21st in home runs, while Atlanta's Truist Park ranked 11th and 19th in those same categories. Truist was also much closer to league-average of the two in terms of home run factor for left-handed hitters (15th compared to 23rd), which is only significant because Morton has been 8% more apt to surrender a fly ball to a left-handed batter since the beginning of 2017.
The second is the divisional competition itself, which might take some fantasy managers by surprise if they think back a few seasons to when the National League East was one of the friendliest environments for a pitcher.
Last season, the NL East's 4.99 collective runs-per-game average was second-highest behind only the NL West's 5.06, and it was nearly one-tenth of a run higher than that of the American League East (4.90). Granted, a sizable chunk of that came from the Braves themselves, but remember that the Philadelphia Phillies and Washington Nationals fancy themselves contenders, the Miami Marlins are beginning their climb up the competitive ranks after many years as one of the league's lightest-hitting teams, and the New York Mets might load up on offense via free agency under new owner Steve Cohen. In addition, should Major League Baseball need to stick to only divisional alignments again for 2021 due to COVID-19 -- which, to be fair, isn't the plan currently -- Morton wouldn't garner many easy matchups pitching exclusively against the Eastern Divisions that collectively averaged 4.94 runs in 2020.
At the offseason's onset, I had Morton ranked as my No. 43 starting pitcher, behind new teammate Ian Anderson. Part of that, however, considered the slim possibility that he might retire; it indicated to early-offseason drafters that selecting him sooner put teams at risk of losing him to that. Morton's natural 2021 rank would've been closer to SP35, between Zach Plesac and Lance McCullers Jr., and I think that's a good place for him now that we know he'll pitch for another year. I would, however, call him a weaker candidate for either a top-20 starter's statistical ceiling or another noticeable, prospective move up in the rankings dependent upon other moves.