The Red Sox have checked in on free agent reliever Matt Moore this offseason, reports Chris Cotillo of MassLive (Twitter links). The extent of their interest isn’t known, but Cotillo adds that fellow southpaw Andrew Chafin has not been on Boston’s radar thus far.
Moore and Chafin are arguably the two best remaining free agent relievers. Alongside Will Smith, they’re part of a group of quality left-handers whose market has unexpectedly lingered. The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal linked a third of the league (Boston included) to the lefty relief market earlier in the week, but we’ve still not seen any notable movement since Taylor Rogers inked a three-year deal with the Giants before the calendar flipped to 2023.
The 33-year-old Moore spent a decade as a big leaguer starter, battling inconsistency along the way. The former top prospect had a couple strong seasons upon breaking in with the Rays but started to struggle in the wake of 2014 Tommy John surgery. He sandwiched a solid 2016 campaign between a trio of 5.00-plus ERA marks between 2015-18. Moore barely pitched in 2019, spent the ’20 campaign in Japan and was hit hard in his return showing with the Phillies two seasons ago.
Moore inked a minor league deal with the Rangers last offseason. He was in the majors again by mid-April and reinvented himself as a power arm out of the bullpen. Texas deployed him exclusively in relief, calling upon the veteran 63 times. Through 74 innings, Moore posted a stellar 1.95 ERA. He struck out batters at a strong 27.3% clip while generating swinging strikes on a massive 14.7% of his offerings. His fastball averaged around 94 MPH and he got excellent results on both his curveball and changeup, giving him a three-pitch arsenal to deploy in short stints.
The sole red flag in Moore’s 2022 performance was his control. He dished out walks to 12.5% of opponents, a rate more than three percentage points higher than average. ERA estimators like FIP (2.98) and SIERA (3.69) weren’t quite as bullish as his sub-2.00 ERA would suggest, as Moore was probably a bit fortunate to strand 81% of the baserunners he allowed. That said, there’s room for Moore to regress marginally from his 2022 level while still remaining a quality high-leverage option if he can sustain last season’s swing-and-miss prowess.
Moore certainly earned himself a big league deal this time around and he has a case for a multi-year pact even headed into his age-34 campaign. Former Red Sox hurler Matt Strahm secured a two-year, $15MM deal from the Phillies on the heels of a solid but arguably less impressive 3.83 ERA/3.30 SIERA showing.
Chafin has an even stronger argument for a two-year contract. He’s going into his age-33 season and coming off a second straight excellent year. He provided the Tigers 57 1/3 frames of 2.83 ERA ball with a 27.6% strikeout rate and 7.8% walk percentage. That was on the heels of a 1.83 ERA season between the Cubs and A’s in 2021. Speculatively speaking, it’s possible that’s leading to a loftier asking price than is coming from Moore’s camp to explain Boston’s seeming lack of interest in Chafin.
The Red Sox have a fairly straightforward desire for left-handed relief help. They’ve added Joely Rodríguez on a $2MM free agent contract but parted with Darwinzon Hernández and Josh Taylor after seeing Strahm leave in free agency. Rodríguez is the only assured lefty reliever on the 40-man roster, though starting pitching prospects Chris Murphy and Brandon Walter could theoretically find themselves in that mix. The Sox have signed Ryan Sherriff and Matt Dermody to minor league deals in recent days to strengthen the depth. Neither would take them out of the market for Moore, who’d be a more significant acquisition.
The Red Sox currently project for a player payroll in the $192MM range, as tabulated by Roster Resource. More meaningfully, they’re around $219MM in luxury tax obligations. That leaves them approximately $14MM shy of the $233MM base threshold, so a Moore deal would be financially viable while still leaving them some breathing room under the tax for midseason additions should they so desire. The Cubs are the only other team known to have checked in with Moore’s camp this winter, though there are surely numerous unreported suitors.