The thought has crept into his mind every offseason for the past four or five years.

After pitching in his final start of the 2024 season, Charlie Morton handed over the ball to Atlanta manager Brian Snitker with one out in the fifth inning of a must-win late-September game for the Braves. He had allowed four runs on two homers and left a runner aboard, an uneven finish to his regular season in a pivotal game for his club.

As he headed toward the dugout, unsure if he would ever throw another pitch in the major leagues again, Morton sensed that the moment wasn’t right for the conclusion of his 17-year MLB career.

“I remember walking off the field and just this sinking feeling in my stomach that it just didn’t feel right,” Morton said in a video news conference Wednesday. “I’m sure a lot of guys towards the end of their careers, they think about retiring, shutting it down and you really want to walk off the field the last time and feel good about it. And a lot of guys don’t get that opportunity.

“I just didn’t feel good about it. I felt like I could have done better.”

He decided retirement would have to wait at least another year. Morton signed a one-year, $15 million contract with the Orioles this winter, extending his playing career into his age-41 season with a young ballclub hoping to lean on his durability and playoff experience. The right-hander has started at least 30 games in each of his past six full seasons, and he arrives in Baltimore a two-time World Series winner still capable of pitching important innings for a contending team.

Morton avoided checking in with his agents early in the offseason, enjoying some time with his wife and children before coming to a final decision. Once he did, however, he found the Orioles were among the potential suitors most interested in signing him. It was clear a return to the Braves wasn’t going to happen, but Baltimore — close in proximity to his family in Virginia and his in-laws up the East Coast — jumped out to him as an ideal fit.

“I was awarded enough time to sit back and think about it in the offseason and when the Orioles called, there were a couple of teams that called that I think would just work logistically with myself and my family because I do want to be somewhat close,” Morton said.

“Then there’s the team. There’s the group of guys that are in that clubhouse that have done some special things and a chance to be a part of that group, and getting to know the guys and getting to know the staff and the city of Baltimore, which I’ve loved playing when we visited, and they’re just a really talented group and young and exciting.”

With a $15 million investment, the Orioles showed they have just as much faith in Morton’s ability to rebound in 2025 as has in himself. His final season in Atlanta had plenty of positives despite his 4.19 ERA. He struck out opposing batters at an above-average clip of 23.8% and ranked among the league leaders with a 46.3% groundball rate. Morton’s average fastball velocity has remained around 94 mph for years, and he has a complete repertoire — including a back-breaking curveball that has become his primary pitch.

Morton is the rare starter whose 30s proved more productive, and healthy, than his 20s. Coming off surgery to repair a torn hamstring in 2016, he wasn’t confident he would land a major league deal. The Houston Astros offered him a two-year pact and worked with him to revamp his approach. Results quickly followed and Morton, who to that point had a career 4.54 ERA, has since posted a mark of 3.64 and earned two All-Star Game selections.

Helping matters has been Morton’s ability to stay on the field. While the first half of his career was derailed by Tommy John elbow reconstruction surgery and the hamstring injury, the 2002 third-round draft pick hasn’t spent more than three consecutive weeks on the injured list in eight years. After averaging 18 starts per year through his age-29 campaign, he has improved that number to nearly 25 in the 11 years since.

“I look back 10 years ago, and to the last pitches I threw as a Pittsburgh Pirate as a sinkerballer, and to know how much I have changed, how personally, professionally, physically I’ve changed,” Morton said.

“I’ve changed my delivery. I’ve changed my workouts. There have been times where I changed what I ate, or just to try to be more cognizant of just, pretty much everything that I was doing with my body. Whether that was my mechanics or whatever, my pitch mix, I’ve been able to stay relatively healthy for the past seven or eight years and I started to get a better idea of what I was doing with my delivery and I think throwing a way that doesn’t hurt.”

With the Orioles, Morton will continue to be open to exploring change. That includes in the clubhouse, where he isn’t looking to pound any tables or assert a leadership style upon his new teammates. Morton, one of the oldest players in the sport, plans to spend what once again might be his final year in the majors soaking up the twilight of his career and doing whatever he can to be the piece the Orioles need him to be in their larger puzzle.

“As an individual you fit in different ways with different groups of guys,” Morton said. “I’m not going to be the same guy that I was with the Rays in the clubhouse. I’m not going to be the same guy that I was in the Astros’ or the Braves’ clubhouse.

“But I think really, the value to a person in the clubhouse is the human being that they are, and how much they care about their teammates and how much they care about their coaches and the people that they work with on a day-to-day basis.”

Have a news tip? Contact Matt Weyrich at mweyrich@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/ByMattWeyrich.