Stats — Minor League Splits — WTM
Rather than spend time rehashing all of the circumstances around Moskos’ existence as a Pittsburgh Pirate prospect, let’s rather focus objectively on just what sort of prospect he is. Moskos had an interesting year at Double-A in 2009, putting up a solid ERA (3.74) in 149 innings (mostly as a starter) despite very poor peripherals (just 4.7 K/9 to go with 3.5 BB/9). The way he did it was with a very impressive groundball rate (54.6%) coupled with a relatively low line-drive rate (12.0%). The groundball rate matches his performance with High-A Lynchburg in 2008, though his low LD% and low infield-fly percentage (10.4%) may not be sustainable (they were 16.3% and 13.3% with Lynchburg in 2008).
Moskos isn’t going to be asked to start for the Pirates, though, and so it’s not entirely fair to view him through that lens. There’s not a whole lot of material to judge his potential relief career by, but with Lynchburg in 2008 he did manage 17 strikeouts in 20 innings out of the bullpen. More strikeouts are a good place to start for him. The problem (at least as I see it) is that he doesn’t have much of a career platoon split in the minors at all. In fact, Minor League Splits puts his FIPs for 2008 and 2009 as almost dead even between righties and lefties. That means that becoming a LOOGY isn’t really an option, and so he’s really going to have to show something new out of the bullpen (or maybe something old; we’re still all waiting on his slider to impress people the way it wowed Dave Littlefield’s staff) to convince me that he’s headed for a good career as a big league reliever.
July 2010 Update: Moskos was great in relief with Altoona so far this year, but then he’s 24 and repeating Double-A as a reliever. I do think he earned his promotion to Indianapolis where, as of this writing he’s got a nice ERA and terrifying peripherals in 7 1/3 innings. Given all the flack he took for being picked instead of Wieters, I’m really pulling for this guy and honestly, I still think he’s got a shot to be a decent left-handed arm in a Major League pen.
