Charlie Morton had a PirateFest obligation at 11 this morning, but got a call from Pirates general manager Neal Huntington, asking to meet him in the lobby of the hotel.
Before long, he was meeting Tony Watson for breakfast in the Strip District, informing Watson that he’d been traded, and taking a flight back to Tampa.
“[Huntington] said, ‘We have some needs, I have to do some things for the team and I feel like this is something I have to do to make the team better,’” Morton said by phone from his car in Florida.
The Pirates traded Morton to the Philadelphia Phillies for minor league right-hander David Whitehead, shedding Morton’s $8 million salary for 2016 in the process.