As part of an offseason poll, ESPN asked “28 general managers, assistant GMs, scouts and player personnel people” to vote on some baseball-related referendums. They answered seven questions -- most of them on free agents and managerial openings. The last question was this:
Offseason Debate: Matt Moore Or Stephen Strasburg?
The Rays and Nationals each have one of the best young pitching talents in all of baseball. Which one would you rather have on your team?
Which young pitching phenom would you rather have: Yu Darvish, Stephen Strasburg or Matt Moore?
Moore got thirteen votes. Strasburg got twelve. Three couldn’t choose between Moore and Strasburg. After hearing about Strasburg for so, so long -- from college to debut to injury to return -- it’s hard to imagine there being any young pitcher being more covetable.
Then you look at Matt Moore. So young, left-handed, and good in that young, left-handed, and good kind of way. He pitched nine innings in the majors before being asked to start in the ALDS. In two playoff games, he allowed a run in ten innings. So you have a pretty good idea that he has some semblance of concentration to go along with his mid-90s fastball. He struck out 11½ batters for every nine innings he pitched in AA, then moved up to AAA, where he struck out 13½ batters for every nine innings.
No one really knows about Yu Darvish, really. His stats and stuff are both amazing, but he plays in a league where Matt Murton is one of the leading hitters, and he's been worked amazingly hard at an early age. Everyone asked for the poll decided to make it a two-way competition between Moore and Strasburg. In six months, when Darvish has a 1.88 ERA for the Marlins or something, maybe they'll all reconsider.
For now, though, it’s an either/or question. And it’s an annoyingly tough one.
Argument for Moore:
That clip has everything you need to know, including just how you might procure a weather balloon using points earned with your credit card. Moore throws 95+, but he also has a deceptive change up and a fast, hard-breaking slider. His control took a nice jump in the right direction in 2011, even as he was advancing levels. If he already had superlative command, he’d be the perfect pitching prospect.
Argument for Strasburg
Speaking of the perfect pitching prospect, here he is. Or was. Guess he’s not a prospect any more. But he’s still an unknown. The perfect unknown talent, then:
How nasty is Strasburg? When you watch those pitches, you can't even make Pirates jokes. That's … unheard of. Nothing they could have done, so there's no point in snide comments. And while Moore is left-handed, Strasburg can match him pitch for pitch, but with a little more velocity and control. That almost settles the argument on its own.
Except Strasburg has already had surgery on his pitching elbow. Matt Moore still has all of his factory ligaments. That might be enough to prefer him to Strasburg, all things being equal. Moore can’t match the shiny K/BB totals that Strasburg has put up in his short time in the majors, but he has a similarly impressive repertoire without the history of scalpel-related mishaps.
Both of their strikeout rates in professional baseball eclipsed the orbit of sanity a long time ago. Both of them have absurd talent, and that’s obvious after watching them for a third of an inning. In the end, the question isn’t so much “Strasburg vs. Moore” as it is “Faith in modern medicine vs. Faith in a young pitcher’s control improving on the job.” Strasburg already has the control and command. Moore doesn’t have the injury history, though one of the NL scouting directors in the ESPN article noted that Strasburg “(has) already had his Tommy John surgery.” Meaning, it’s out of the way, so he should be fine for a while. Maybe it’s more of a green flag than a red one.
It's a little early to say this is the Dwight Gooden/Roger Clemens debate of our time -- heck, in a couple years, we might look back and think of it like a Jesse Foppert/Bill Pulsipher debate. But it's a worthy debate to have because Moore and Strasburg are both pretty unique -- they're the archetypes that make scouts drool.
See More:
