The Red Sox have agreed to a minor league contract with left-hander Matt Moore, reports Rob Bradford of WEEI. He’ll presumably head to big league camp for the remainder of spring training.
Moore, 36, has spent the bulk of the past two seasons with the Angels. He made a couple of quick pit stops in Cleveland and Miami following the Angels’ Aug. 2023 mass waiver purge, but more than 90% of his appearances since 2023 have come in a Halos uniform.
Once ranked among the game’s top three prospects alongside Mike Trout and Bryce Harper, Moore had a nice start to his career but never got fully back on track following 2014 Tommy John surgery. He got back up 198 innings of 4.08 ERA ball in 2016 but wasn’t the borderline ace-caliber pitcher he looked to be when first breaking into the majors.
Moore struggled with the Giants and Rangers in 2017-18 and then missed nearly all of the 2019 season with the Tigers after suffering a knee injury in just his second start of the season. A nice 2020 run in Japan led to a 2021 deal with the Phillies, but Moore again struggled as a starter and was moved to a swing role.
Returning to the Rangers on a minor league deal in 2022, Moore found new life and a second act in his career upon a full-time shift to short relief. He pitched 74 innings of 1.95 ERA ball that season, parlaying that rebound effort into successive one-year deals in Anaheim. The first of those two seasons was better than the second, though Moore’s 2024 results (5.03 ERA in 48 1/3 innings) are skewed by a pair of disastrous outings; he combined to yield one-third of his season-long earned run total between those two starts (just one inning of work).
Taken in total, Moore’s three years as a full-time reliever have resulted in 175 innings of 2.98 ERA ball. He’s fanned one quarter of his opponents while issuing walks at a 10.8% clip. He’s worked primarily in high-leverage settings, coming away with 46 holds and six saves. Moore has only taken a blown save on five occasions over the past three seasons.
There were some red flags in 2024, most notably a 1.3 mph dip in his average four-seam velocity (from 94 to 92.7). However, that dip in velo and some late command troubles could both be attributable to a forearm strain that ended Moore’s season in late August.
More to come.
