The Rangers are moving veteran left-hander Matt Moore from the starting rotation to the bullpen, tweets Jeff Wilson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Fellow left-hander Yohander Mendez will start for Texas in Moore’s place on Friday.
It’s a disappointing outcome for both team and player, though Moore received perhaps a longer leash than his early results would’ve otherwise dictated. Through 56 innings with the Rangers, Moore has been hammered for a 7.88 ERA, averaging 6.6 K/9 against 4.2 BB/9 and 1.29 HR/9. To be sure, there’s been some degree of poor fortune at play, as Moore’s .394 BABIP and 59.9 percent strand rate look fluky. But his K/BB numbers are still the worst of his career, and fielding-independent metrics like FIP, xFIP and SIERA all still peg him north of 5.00.
The brutal start to the season for Moore is the continuation of a rather precipitous decline for the once-vaunted prospect. Prior to the 2012 season, each of Baseball America, MLB.com and Baseball Prospectus considered Moore among the top two overall prospects in all of baseball, and he lived up to the hype early on, making the All-Star team and earning some Cy Young votes in an excellent age-24 season back in 2013.
Moore, though, required Tommy John surgery in 2014 and has never recaptured his front-of-the-rotation form since returning. He did toss 198 1/3 frames of 4.08 ERA ball between Tampa Bay and San Francisco in 2016 — a solid season that looked to set him back on track at the very least as a serviceable mid-rotation piece — but he’s followed that up with 230 1/3 innings of a 6.10 ERA and 4.83 FIP.
[Related: Texas Rangers depth chart]
Shortly after making his MLB debut, Moore agreed to a five-year, $14MM deal with the Rays that included club options for both the 2018 and 2019 seasons. While that deal long looked to be one of the best bargains in baseball, it now suddenly looks unlikely that Texas will even exercise its $10MM club option over Moore for the ’19 season. The Rangers didn’t give up much to acquire Moore and some international bonus allotments from the Giants, sending minor leaguers Israel Cruz and Sam Wolff back to the Giants in exchange. The addition was one of several low-cost pickups for the rotation this winter, but the majority of those moves have failed to pay dividends.
As for Mendez, he’s a former top 100 prospect whose star has dimmed a bit in recent years. Though he posted respectable numbers in Double-A last season, he’s off to a miserable start in Triple-A Round Rock, where he’s struggled to a 5.26 ERA with 7.0 K/9, 4.0 BB/9, 1.75 HR/9 and a 41.4 percent ground-ball rate. That said, Mendez only turned 23 back in January and has pitched better over his past five appearances (4.00 ERA, 25-to-9 K/BB ratio in 27 innings), and frankly, Moore’s persistent struggles simply make it difficult to keep trotting him out there as a starter.
You wish Moore figures it out, but Rangers’ fans can relax knowing it’s the final year of his contract.
(Safe to say $10M 2019 club option won’t be exercised.)
The M’s need to do the same with Felix.
FIP between 4.5-5 each of the last 3 seasons? Yes you would hope they are at least considering the possibility.
If nothing more, for a short time.
Moore had more bad outings than good with the Giants last year, and I was completely stunned when they picked up his 2018 option after the season. I really thought they’d cut him loose, but SF was lucky to find a taker in TEX. After the Rangers decline his 2019 option Moore may want to consider going to Japan or Korea to find himself and rebuild his value. As it is now he just gets worse with every appearance.
Sorry to see his career suffer like this. I do miss him, but I’m glad to have Matt Duffy because of him. Hopefully, he finds new life as a reliever. Anything is possible with a southpaw.
I just went and read the comments from that trade. It’s kind of funny seeing how many people thought the Giants robbed the Rays blind at the time.
I thought the return for Moore was light, but I had a feeling he was falling apart, too. I’m really looking forward to see how Lucius Fox develops. If he doesn’t pan out as a shortstop/lead off hitter, he can always go work for Bruce Wayne.
That was just an awful trade from a Giants fan point of view. They traded a fan favorite for a turd of a pitcher who always looked like he wanted to cry. I’d rather that trade never happened and y’all could still have Longo while we had Duffy on 3b.
Bobby Evans sucks, that’s all.
Longo for Duffy, straight up?
Nope. If you want longo back you have to send back Duffy and Arroyo lol