Moyer for two?!?
I’m really not sure about signing Jamie Moyer for two more years. If you look over Moyer’s record for the past 10 years it’s been either very good or very bad. The reason for that is because he relies entirely on pinpoint control and if he doesn’t have it, he’s in big trouble. He was very effective the last six weeks of the season, but his walk rate during that stretch was better than it has been over any full season in his career, so hoping for a repeat of that seems like a real stretch. Plus he’s a strong flyball pitcher, and even with the fences back some, CBP is still a homer friendly ballpark. That doesn’t seem like a good combination.
On top of that, it seems nuts to give a 43 year old pitcher a multiyear contract. On the other hand, Moyer is so far removed from a normal major league pitcher that we can ignore that. I mean if he loses a couple miles per hour off his fast ball is anyone going to notice? Moyer is similar in a lot of ways to knuckleball pitchers and they’ve tended to last longer than power pitchers do. So maybe the age isn’t an issue.
At this point the rotation is actually looking fairly set for next year. Cole Hamels and Brett Myers are clearly the class of the rotation and could very well form one of the better one-two combinations in the league. Of the other three, the one I most wanted to see back is the one whose future is still uncertain. I think Randy Wolf is quite capable of running off a couple of very good years in the next few. Most pitchers back from Tommy John surgery take about half a season to really get their control back. Wolf had bursts of effective pitching this year, but his control was an issue. If he regains the control he could easily be a very solid mid-rotation pitcher. Given the free agent market this year I don’t see a better option out there since I don’t think Barry Zito would come to Philadelphia.