Once considered among the elite young players in the game, Matt Moore has fallen to taking a one-year deal with the Detroit Tigers.
The Detroit Tigers are in the midst of a rebuild, and they are looking for arms that can be rehabbed and flipped at the trade deadline for more prospects. Matt Moore has become an ideal candidate for exactly that.
It wasn’t always that way. The lefty was an 8th round pick by the Tampa Bay Rays in the 2007 draft that immediately found success in the Rays system. He worked up the methodical Rays development track for pitchers, one level at a time, reaching the upper minors in 2011, when the Rays could no longer hold him back, as he posted a 1.92 ERA over 27 starts and 155 innings in AA and AAA before putting up a 2.89 ERA over 9 1/3 innings with the major league club. He then put up a 0.90 ERA over 10 innings in the playoffs against Texas to really capture the nation’s attention.
His outstanding year and his impressive raw stuff sent Moore skyrocketing up the prospect rankings. Going into the 2012 season, the debate was whether Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, or Moore was the top prospect. Incredibly, all three of Baseball America, MLB Pipeline, and Baseball Prospectus had Trout 3rd in their rankings that season, with BA ranking Moore 2nd and MLB Pipeline and BP ranking him first.
That tremendous pedigree would come through in his first major league season, as Moore had typical rookie struggles with control, but made 31 starts and tossed 177 1/3 innings, with a 3.81 ERA, 1.35 WHIP, and a 81/175 BB/K ratio.
In spite of being injured for a spell of the 2013 season, he had arguably his best year as a pro in his second full season, going 17-4 in 27 starts and 150 1/3 innings, with a 3.29 ERA, 1.30 WHIP, and a 76/143 BB/K ratio. He made the 2013 American League All-Star team and was a top-10 finisher in the Cy Young vote that season. After pitching tremendously well in 2011 in the playoffs, he struggled in 2013, sporting a 9.95 ERA in 6 1/3 innings thrown against the Red Sox.
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The Rays moved Moore to San Francisco in the middle of the 2016 season for an impressive trade package that included infielder
Matt Duffyand highly-touted prospect
Lucius Fox. He continued his rather mediocre pitching with the Giants, though he did remain healthy, something he’d struggled with in 2014 and 2015.
In 2017, Moore was just bad, posting a 5.52 ERA, leading the NL in losses, and dishing out 27 home runs in 174 1/3 innings. The Giants traded him in the offseason to Texas for a pair of low-level prospects, but his 2018 was not much better for Texas, posting a 6.79 ERA over 102 innings.
What Moore brings to the Detroit Tigers
Moore still has impressive raw stuff. He has never taken the step forward to control and command that raw stuff, and if the Tigers could harness his stuff for even a half-season, there are enough teams that still likely believe in the raw talent of Matt Moore that the Tigers could get a very solid deal for a half-season of Moore’s services.
The reported deal is for in the range of $2-3 million, so this is not a huge financial outlay for the Detroit Tigers, making it exactly the type of gamble a rebuilding team should take. Whether it pays off for the Tigers and for Moore remains to be seen.