No starting pitcher in the National League has been worse than Giants left-hander Matt Moore this season.
It’s a harsh reality, but Moore’s 6.04 earned run average is the highest among qualifying starters, and by far the worst mark in his seven-year Major League career.
In the month of June, Moore’s been hit harder than a piñata at a birthday party, as his fastballs looked like candy to opposing hitters who feasted on Moore’s offerings to the tune of a .355 batting average over five starts.
If you think Moore has looked like a different pitcher of late, you’re right. The 28-year-old has completely eliminated the cutter from his repertoire, citing mechanical breakdowns his reliance on the pitch caused to his four-seam fastball this season.
“It’s a little bit different of a pitch,” Moore said of the cutter. “At times it can take away from a four-seam fastball and I think just location-wise, command of the four-seam started to go down the more and more I started to rely on and throw that pitch, so I’m trying to get away from certain tendencies that get on the outside of the ball and pull it in as opposed to stay behind it and you know, let it carry.”
At the beginning of June, Moore began to dial back the cut fastball. By the middle of the month, he abandoned it. Now, as the calendar turns to July, the worst 30-day stretch of Moore’s career is in his rearview mirror, but there’s no indication he’ll begin working the cutter back into his arsenal. For Moore, the mechanical flaws the pitch created triggered a five-start stretch in which he allowed 24 earned runs in 24 and 1/3 innings, and forced him to the bottom of the NL ERA rankings.
If the Giants still had visions of a playoff run, there’s no doubt manager Bruce Bochy would consider skipping Moore’s turn in the rotation, shifting the lefty to a bullpen role, or ask San Francisco’s front office to scour the trade market for an adequate replacement. But that ship has sailed, and the Giants should be content to let Moore steer himself into an iceberg.
On the surface, it looks counter-intuitive to allow a pitcher as lost as Moore’s looked of late to take his turn on the watch deck every five days. But for as far off course as Moore appears, the Giants know that if he’s able to locate a map and head for shore, there’s treasure waiting.
With a career 4.18 ERA, Moore’s demonstrated he can be a competent third or fourth starter in a rotation. And with team-friendly options that would put Moore’s salary at $10 million in 2018 and $11 million in 2019, the Giants are aware there aren’t many comparable starters who would sign at comparable rates.
On Saturday, Moore lasted just 4 and 1/3 innings against the New York Mets while allowing seven hits, five earned runs and three walks. Moore was hardly competitive against a subpar Mets lineup, but Bochy believes the compass that will guide Moore in the right direction is still within reach.
“I think he’s really close, I do,” Bochy said. “Because of some of these starts, he probably just tried to establish the fastball a little too much and didn’t have great command of it and that’s why he got burned there early in the game.”
But if Bochy was concerned about Moore’s fastball command and Moore acknowledged he doesn’t have the confidence to throw his cutter, where do the Giants go from here?
They fix Moore’s fastball.
As the month of July commences, the Giants are so far removed from a playoff race that they’ve been afforded a new luxury: time.
San Francisco isn’t going to challenge the Los Angeles Dodgers or Arizona Diamondbacks in the NL West in the near future, but they have plenty of reasons to believe 2018 will be different. That’s why they need Matt Moore in the rotation, and that’s why it’s okay –at least temporarily– that Moore left his cutter out in the sea.
“(The cutter) is something I’m anxious to get back to but at the same time I think the foundation has got to be a true four-seam fastball,” Moore said. “I think from there you kind of start tinkering with things and asking a little more out of it, but I think right now I need to execute more where they’re carrying through the zone, they’re not running or cutting so for me that’s kind of something that’s been on my plate for the last two months, but over the past couple of weeks for sure.”
On Saturday against the Mets, Moore’s fastball did some running. It ran right over the plate, and twice, it ran right into the sweet spot of New York catcher Rene Rivera’s bat. Rivera clobbered two home runs off Moore in his first career multi-home run game, and afterward, Giants catcher Buster Posey acknowledged the danger Moore flirted with.
“I’m not sure what his take on it was, but from my vantage point, he was just missing in the middle of the plate a lot,” Posey said. “Instead of his misses being off the plate, they ended up being on the plate a lot.”
This afternoon, Moore will start against a Pittsburgh Pirates team that’s watched the tape and memorized the scouting report. The Pirates know Moore’s cutter is on the table, but they also know he’ll have to reach to get to it. That’s why a potential resurgence from Moore won’t feature an aha moment, but rather a gradual progression back to the form he achieved early in his career with Tampa Bay.
Moore’s arsenal is currently limited, and the Pirates know Moore’s goal is to pound the zone with fastballs. While Saturday’s start may not yield the type of bounce-back outing Moore and the Giants would love to see, if he experiences incremental improvement, it will represent a paddle in the direction of the shore.
Though Moore has labored through rough waters, the Giants should take comfort in knowing that the left-hander has identified his most significant mechanical issue.
“I haven’t been getting the ball to the extension side as well as I’d like and I think it kind of starts right there,” Moore said. “Just working backwards, if I’m going to be on the arm side of the plate, I have to be over there too, and the arm side stuff is creeping over the middle, that’s where my cutter has been and that’s why I haven’t thrown it in the last few games.”
The 2017 Giants season has quickly become all about what the team can achieve in 2018 and 2019. So if the Giants can help Moore rebuild his arsenal, from the fastball back to the cutter, there’s a much better chance he’ll be improved when it matters most.
While the losing is hard to take — for Moore, the Giants and their fan base — Bochy and the team’s management know the value Moore represents down the line, which mean his remaining starts, much like the team’s remaining games, are about discovering what’s in store for the future.
“It’s really, I think, important to keep him (Moore) going,” Bochy said. “I don’t think he wants to take longer than five days to think about it or whatever. Take a step back. There’s no health issues involved so with that, it’s the reason I think he needs to keep pitching.”