Here’s a quick chart comparing the Rays’ starting pitchers to the Dodgers. Obviously a lot of things will be different, but let’s see what’s the same.

(Note that “Age” is seasonal age for the 2013 season and “Free Agency Year” is the year following their last season under contract, counting all option years.)

Comparing the two groups of pitchers, obviously the money is completely different and any comparison we try to make is flimsy as best. Both rotations have young ace lefties in David Price and Clayton Kershaw, another promising lefty still looking to establish himself in the big leagues in Moore and Ryu, and an enigmatic middle-aged righty in  Hernandez and Josh Beckett, and maybe we can stretch and compare Niemann to Billingsley as pitchers who have shown talent in the past but are coming off injuries. But when we go back to where the Rays rotation was early this offseason, before the big Shields trade, the comparison is a little more compelling.

David Price and Clayton Kershaw are both dominant ace left-handers making their first big payday this season as they reached an eight-figure salary for the first time. Shields and Greinke are high-priced veteran right-handers a clear step who have never quite established themselves as true aces except for one great season (Greinke in 2009 and Shields in 2011) but are clear frontline arms with the ability to be a second ace in the rotation. Hellickson and Billingsley are talented right-handers who still need to prove they can sustain their past performance, Hellickson because of his peripheral statistics and Billingsley because of his injury concerns. Moore and Ryu are both young lefties with the ability to become very good pitchers right now but who still have much to prove. Niemann and Beckett are right-handers who were really good not that long ago and are struggling to become the pitchers they once were. Cobb and Capuano are solid middle-of-the-rotation arms but lack the upside of the guys around them. Davis and Harang are right-handers who showed quite a bit of ability in the past but took a step back and may not be worth their salary anymore (as the Rays showed by trading Davis). Archer and Lilly are awfully hard to compare, but both are pitchers with talent with questions remaining over whether they’ll be able to contribute in the major leagues this season, with Archer still needing to work on his control and changeup and Lilly needing to stay healthy. So what does this tell us? Simply that we can make a halfway-decent comparison between these two starting staffs or at least between where they were earlier this offseason. But we still haven’t answered our question: have the Dodgers and Rays carried out similar strategies in the handling of their rotation surpluses?

The knee-jerk reaction to that question is that the Rays and Dodgers’ strategies could not be any more different- after all, the Rays traded away Shields and Davis while the Dodgers added Greinke and Ryu. That’s certainly a key difference between the Rays and Dodgers- the Rays have to fight to remain competitive despite major budgetary constraints while the Dodgers are willing to spend as much as it takes to make their team one of the best in baseball. But the mindset behind all the moves both teams made this offseason were actually very similar. Why could the Rays trade Shields and Davis? Because they believed that Hellickson and Moore could step up to become at least a solid number two and number three in their rotation and that Moore had the ability to expedite his development and become a second ace alongside Price before they knew it. The Dodgers added Greinke and Ryu to secure the number two and number three spots in their starting staff while the Rays traded away Shields knowing that they had that and needing to address other needs. But the comparison stretches farther than that.

Both teams had solid rotations even after the Shields trade for the Rays and after the Greinke signing for the Dodgers, but both teams felt the need to sign one more starter, Hernandez for the Rays and Ryu for Los Angeles. Obviously Ryu is a much better insurance policy considering that he’s been dominating in Korea while Hernandez hasn’t been any good since 2010, but both teams saw the risk in the players they had, with the Rays worrying about how unproven their rotation was while the Dodgers were primarily concerned with the potential for injury on their staff. And even though both teams have eight strong rotation candidates, neither are rushing to trade their back-end guys, with other teams having interesting in the Rays’ Niemann and the Dodgers’ Harang but nothing likely to happen until at least the end of spring training when both teams have their starting five firmed up.

The Dodgers will spend around 80 million dollars on their rotation even if there’s a trade while the Rays will spend under 20 million dollars. But the thought process of the two teams is extremely similar: prioritize getting a strong top three in their rotation, sign additional depth when the opportunity arises, and don’t make a trade except when you’re absolutely sure that you have sufficient pitchers remaining to keep from losing a beat. None of those ideas is that crazy- I’m sure every team in baseball would love to get an amazing rotation with a dynamite top three and ridiculous depth, and also have the luxury of trading a starting pitcher at their terms- but the way both the Rays and Dodgers place a premium on starting pitching in a very similar way is pretty staggering. The two teams work in completely different ways- the Rays have made their rotation one of the best in baseball through a series of excellent draft picks and trades while the Dodgers have done so by spending money like crazy- but the end result is the same even in the process is extremely different.

The Rays and Dodgers will take on each other in a three-game series at Dodger Stadium from August 9th to 11th, and fans will see two teams who work in entirely different financial stratospheres. But when the pitchers take the mound and go up against one another, the results for the two pitchers could be incredibly similar. Although you can’t predict baseball and it’s far too early to tell, there’s a great chance that the games will be pitchers’ duels heading right down the wire. That’s not meant as praise of the Rays’ ability to work with a small payroll or disdain to what the Dodgers have done with their large one- just a statement to how the minds behind two of the best teams in baseball work alike even when their financial realities couldn’t be any more at odds.

Moore can't be happy about the way his season has started. (Credit: Kim Klement-US PRESSWIRE)

The first thing to note of here is that the sample size is too small. To give an example, can you name one pitcher minimum 14 innings pitched who is in the top five in the major leagues in ERA? You would name Roy Halladay, Clayton Kershaw, Cliff Lee, CC Sabathia, Jered Weaver, and maybe even Stephen Strasburg but none of those would be right. The top five pitchers in baseball in terms of ERA are Brandon Beachy, Ross Detwiler, Jake Westbrook, Joe Saunders, and Matt Harrison. Would anyone like to argue that those are the five best pitchers in baseball? And if Moore is so bad, his ERA (5.12) is actually better than Sabathia (5.59)! Is Sabathia just that bad? Although the rest of the AL East and all of baseball wishes that was so, that is certainly not the case.

But I just used ERA for the example above. ERA has a lot of variability and luck involved, so it’s not always the best barometer of a pitcher’s true ability. Looking at baseball’s FIP leaderboard (FIP is a “true ERA” estimator based on the factors pitchers can supposedly control: strikeouts, walks, and home runs allowed), we get much more recognizable names: Zach Greinke, Gio Gonzalez, Weaver, Veralnder, and Strasburg occupy the top five spots in baseball. Moore’s FIP is currently the 4th-worst among qualifiers, coming in at 5.64. Could Moore and the Rays have a real problem here?

As it turns out, Moore is a slow starter. Moore had a 6.75 ERA through his first three starts at Double-A in 2011. In his first three High-A starts in 2010, he had a 5.56 ERA. Apparently, it takes Moore a little while to get going. But wait a second! In his first three starts of those two years, Moore had a 3.65 FIP and a 2.94 FIP respectively! That’s not nearly as bad as his 5.64 FIP in 2012! But FIP does not account for how hard balls are hit. Maybe everything works out over larger sample sizes, but especially in small samples we see pitchers strikeout a lot of guys and not walk very many, but they still have bad outings. From watching Moore right now, we know that he’s been struggling with command. That could very well have been the case in 2010 and 2011. But the problem is that we don’t know for sure. So we have two possible proofs to why Moore is fine: sample size and that he’s been a slow starter the past couple of seasons. But both of those proofs have their problems. Is there some perfect proof to prove unequivocally that Moore will be fine in 2012? I’ll say yes: his Pitch F/X data from thus far this year. Even if Moore is struggling, his pitches should be moving as good as ever if he really is fine. Let’s compare Moore’s Pitch F/X data from 2011 to 2012, courtesy of Brooks Baseball, displayed on one of my Pitch Movement graphs. We’ll say this: if the movement on his pitches is close to or better than the movement on his pitches from 2011, he should be fine. If it’s worse, we may have a problem here. Let’s see what the data shows us.

(For a general explanation of the topic of Pitch F/X and specifically how to read this type of graph, please click here.)

 These graphs look awfully similar, and the movement on Moore’s pitches in 2012 is arguably better. Looking at the key, we see that Moore has used his pitched somewhat differently, and we also see a general downtick in velocity. It makes sense that his velocity is down because a good amount of his Pitch F/X in 2011 came out of the bullpen, and it makes sense that he’s used his secondary pitches more as a starter- but wait a second. We see in the key that the blue line in the graph is Moore’s fastball while the purple line is his sinker. Both of those are varieties of fastballs. So in 2011, Moore threw a fastball 72% of the time. But in 2012, that number has actually gone up to 74% despite the fact that he’s now starting games every time out. What could that mean?

Pitches are forced to throw more fastballs when they get behind in counts. That is what has been occurring for Moore in 2012. Just 58% of his pitches have been strikes compared to his 64% mark in 2012 and the 63% mark the last two seasons. Even though Moore has gotten better movement on his pitches, he has not yet been able to use that to his advantage. Instead of Moore’s pitches starting off the strike zone before hitting the corner or starting at the strike zone before disappearing out of zone, Moore’s pitches are either moving off the plate or moving right down the middle where they have become hittable. This also has to do with the lack of some velocity. We know that pitchers gain velocity as the year progresses and we should see Moore get his average fastball velocity up before the year is through. With less velocity, the ball tends to move more. That’s what is happening. Moore is expecting his pitches to move a certain amount, but instead they’re moving too far. Moore wants to hit the outside corner with his fastball, but instead the ball ends up right down the middle. He want to land his curveball at the hitter’s knees for a strike, but instead it’s going too far down. The additional movement is not a bad thing- but Moore has to get used to it.

We see that the past three years, Moore’s FIP in his first three starts has gone up, from 2.94 to 3.65 to 5.64. Why? Because hitters at higher levels punish mistake pitches more. The same thing is happening every season with Moore’s velocity being a tick lower to begin the year and his pitches moving a little bit more, but now major league hitters are able to expose it much more than High-A or Double-A pitchers could.

Matt Moore is having no problems with his pure stuff. He’s throwing plenty hard and getting tons of movement. He just has to acclimate to his current velocity and movement on his pitches and he’ll be fine. Moore has gotten off to a rocky start. But he has the potential to turn his season around and be the type of pitcher who the Rays will have a postseason start. We knew that there would be growing pains in Moore’s rookie year. However, his struggles thus far this season and nothing that won’t naturally be resolved. It may not be pretty to look at Matt Moore’s ERA up on the board right now, but don’t worry. He’ll give us plenty of reason to be excited the rest of the season.