Left-hander Adam Morgan hasn’t played since opting out of a minor league deal with the Astros in May 2022, and The Athletic’s Matt Gelb (Twitter link) reports that the seven-year MLB veteran has retired. Morgan will call it a career after tossing 369 2/3 innings over 233 games with the Phillies and Cubs from 2015-21.
Six of those seven seasons were in Philadelphia, as Morgan was a third-round pick for the Phils in the 2011 draft. Despite a shoulder surgery that cost him the 2014 draft, he still made a pretty quick path to his MLB debut in June 2015, though he had pretty shaky results as a starter in his first two seasons. A move to the bullpen gave Morgan a niche as a multi-inning reliever, and he posted a 3.97 ERA over 133 2/3 relief innings from 2017-19.
Some other injuries hampered Morgan in 2019, and after struggling over 13 innings for Philadelphia in the shortened 2020 season, Morgan underwent a flexor tendon repair surgery in October 2020 that kept him off the mound until May 2021. This return came with the Cubs’ Triple-A team, as Morgan signed a minor league deal with Chicago that offseason after the Phillies outrighted him off their 40-man roster.
Morgan made it back to the Show for 25 1/3 innings for the Cubs in 2021, posting a 4.26 ERA in what ended up being his final big league season. For his career, the southpaw had a 4.80 ERA, 20.8% strikeout rate, and 7.2% walk rate over his 369 2/3 frames. Unsurprisingly, most of Morgan’s success came against left-handed batters, who managed only a .215/.291/.331 slash line against the hurler in 574 plate appearances.
Morgan caught on with the Astros during the 2021-22 offseason, but enacted the opt-out clause in his contract since no opportunities were emerging for him on Houston’s MLB roster. The lefty has now chosen to hang up his spikes altogether at age 33, and went back to the University of Alabama (where Morgan played college ball) to get his degree. Gelb notes that Morgan is a co-founder of Objective X-Ray, an organization devoted to providing mental health resources and financial assistance to military veterans and first responders.
We at MLB Trade Rumors congratulate Morgan on his baseball career, and wish him all the best in his post-playing days.
A casualty of MLB’s three hitter rule. Sounds like Morgan has a worthwhile post-Baseball endeavor to work on so congrats to him
Loogys are an endangered species now.
I think hitters retired him a while ago.
A guy I remember from the Phillies rebuilding years, hope he does well with the money he’s earned and will hopefully soon earn more w/ a degree
Lived around the corner from him
Too bad. Just this close (thumb & forefinger) to being another Lefty Grove. Or Gomez. Or Frizzell, maybe.
First Lefty Frizzell mention I’ve seen in over 10 years on this site. I like it. If you’ve got the money honey I’ve got the time.
I like that when a guy retires, about half the comments are insults. As you were.
I just love sarcasm.
So true. Must be jealousy. How many innings of MLB did they pitch? Lol
So true. Jealousy is an ugly thing. How many innings in MLB did they pitch? Lol.
Pitching is hard on the human body. The fact that he carved out a few decent years in the MLB is incredible.
He earned nearly $5 million playing baseball. Congratulations to him.
A pretty nice chunk of change and lifetime health insurance to retire? Hey, why not?