The Angels acquired Zack Greinke from the Milwaukee Brewers on Friday in exchange for middle infielder Jean Segura and right-handed pitching prospects John Wellweg and Ariel Pena. Segura has a promising bat but questionable plate discipline and defense. Hellweg and Pena are both promising pitchers, featuring great upside but also inconsistent control and struggles developing an effective third pitch. The Rays wanted more than that for James Shields. Jon Heyman quoted the Rays as wanting “north of Greinke” in a potential Shields trade. Is that a reflection of how the Rays view Greinke compared to Shields? Absolutely not. The difference between Greinke and Shields is that Greinke will be a free agent following the season while Shields has team options for the next two years following 2012.

It’s funny how things can work out. The Rays said no to the Angels on a potential package for Shields and immediately the Angels pulled the trigger for Greinke. The Rays’ relationship with Greinke is a completely indirect one. But now their paths collide as Jeremy Hellickson and the Rays hope to beat Greinke and the Angels and take 2 of 3 from the Halos before they take off from Anaheim.

Could the Rays be involved in a trade sending their former World Series nemesis out of Philadelphia? (Credit: Howard Smith-US PRESSWIRE)

The Rays have plenty of starting pitching. Yet getting into the discussions for pitchers in high demand as the trade deadline approaches such as Cole Hamels, Zack Greinke, and Matt Garza could be a very beneficial move for the Rays.

In a deal for an elite pitcher on the trade market, there are going to be plenty of prospects involved. But the question is going to be whether the prospects the prospective acquiring teams have are the right prospects for the trading teams. When that isn’t the case, you may have something that a team that wouldn’t normally be involved in the trade talks may need, and that gives you two franchises to combine for the pieces needed to trade for one of these topflight starting pitchers. The Rays would love to be the facilitator under the right circumstances. I talked about this specifically with ex-Ray Matt Garza and catcher Geovany Soto back in February.

The conditions for the Rays to be involved in a trade like this are as follows:

1) A team involved in talks would have to possess a catcher or a player/prospect of some kind that the Rays feel would be the perfect fit for their organization

2A) A division rival for the Rays (i.e. Yankees or Orioles) would have to be on the verge of acquiring one of these topflight pitchers and a team who fits the first criteria would have to be involved in the talks and willing to up their offer to swoop in and acquire the pitcher themselves

AND/OR

2B) The potentially acquiring team is begging for the Rays to join the deal and the Rays see an opportunity to acquire the player in question for the first criteria at little cost

Andrew Friedman and the Rays would love to control all the dealings in baseball, but they’re not going to get involved in a trade like this unless it provides them with worthy benefit in the form of a needed player and an opportunity to prevent a key player from heading to a rival or the opportunity for a steal of a trade. I could see a trade like this happen if a team dangles a big league catcher or an upper-levels catching prospect and if the Phillies (Hamels), Cubs (Garza), or Brewers (Greinke) want upper-levels pitching prospects/big league starters in a trade (which the Rays have plenty of- Chris Archer, Alex Colome, Wade Davis) or shortstop prospects with upside (take Tim Beckham and Brandon Martin) and a prospective acquiring team doesn’t have them or doesn’t want to trade the ones they have.

What would a trade like this look like? One example that probably no longer applies at all is the example in the link above, which involves the Detroit Tigers. But let’s look at another such scenario now. A rumor has been that the Pittsburgh Pirates are looking to acquire Cole Hamels from the Phillies. The Pirates have taken their top two pitching prospects, Gerrit Cole and Jameson Taillon, off the table and don’t have any shortstop prospects of note (Alen Hanson plays there now but has no chance to stay there). The Pirates’ best offer to the Phillies given the conditions they have set for themselves would look something like this.

Philadelphia Phillies trade LHP Cole Hamels to the Pittsburgh Pirates in exchange for OF Starling Marte, RHP Luis Heredia, RHP Kyle McPherson, 1B Alex Dickerson, and OF Robbie Grossman.

This package lacks luster. Marte is an excellent prospect but one who still needs a lot of work, Heredia has ridiculous upside but is a 17 year old at Short Season-A, McPherson has the ability to be only a solid starter and missed much of this season with shoulder inflammation, Dickerson is just a decent first base prospect, and Grossman doesn’t have any standout tools. Now watch what this deal turns into when the Rays enter.

Philadelphia Phillies trade LHP Cole Hamels to the Pittsburgh Pirates and RHP Brody Colvin and OF Kyrell Hudson to the Tampa Bay Rays. Pirates trade OF Starling Marte, RHP Luis Heredia, and 1B Alex Dickerson to the Philadelphia Phillies and C Tony Sanchez and RHP Zack Von Rosenberg to the Tampa Bay Rays. Tampa Bay Rays trade RHP Chris Archer and SS Tim Beckham to the Philadelphia Phillies and INF Sean Rodriguez to the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Now the Phillies are getting a group of four high-upside guys in Marte, Archer, Beckham, and Heredia to go along with Dickerson, and Archer could be in the big leagues this season while Marte and Beckham should not be far behind. They have a chance to get four above-average big league players, including a superstar or two, to go along with a solid first baseman. They do give up a couple of risky players with upside in Colvin and Hudson, but they have plenty of those at pitcher and outfielder. The Pirates save themselves McPherson and Grossman and trade away Von Rosenberg, a pitcher who doesn’t exactly have the highest upside but still comes with risk, and the only player they would have any qualms parting with would be Sanchez. But if Tony Sanchez, currently the owner of a .254/.329/.384 line in 2012 was the only thing holding up the Pirates from getting Cole Hamels, they wouldn’t hesitate to trade him. They also get a player who could start at shortstop for them in Rodriguez from the Rays. The Rays, meanwhile, trade from a positions of strength and receive the upper-levels catching prospect they desperately need, two lower-levels pitching prospects to add to their pitching depth and who could flourish if the Rays can teach them changeups, the organizational specialty, and a high-upside outfielder, which the Rays can’t get enough of. The Rays don’t exactly give up nothing in this trade, but they don’t give up any players who they really need for the future and get a player who could play a big role in the future of the team in Sanchez to go along with three other noteworthy prospects. Especially if a division rival was looking to acquire Hamels and appeared to have a chance, the Rays would jump at the chance to be part of a deal like this.

Will the Rays be part of a trade for one of these high-profile pitchers? Right now it seems to be relatively unlikely. But if the right circumstances arrive and Andrew Friedman and the Rays see the right opportunity, they won’t be afraid to pull the trigger.

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.