The Kansas City Royals added a familiar name to their organizational depth chart this weekend, signing veteran left-hander Matt Moore to a minor league contract. The 37-year-old, who just celebrated a birthday two days ago, has been around long enough to have pitched for nearly a third of the league.
Moore hasn’t appeared in the majors since last season with the Los Angeles Angels, where he posted a 5.03 ERA across 51 relief appearances before a forearm injury shut him down in late August. He briefly had a minor league deal with the Red Sox back in February but never threw a pitch for Triple-A Worcester and was let go in early April.
It’s been a weird ride for Moore, who was once the No. 1 prospect in all of baseball. Back in 2011, he debuted for the Rays and promptly threw seven scoreless innings in the ALDS against the Rangers, basically announcing himself before he’d even settled into the big leagues. The next year he struck out 175 batters. In 2013, at 24, he made the All-Star team, went 17-4 with a 3.29 ERA, and got down-ballot Cy Young votes.
Then Tommy John surgery in 2014 changed the trajectory. From 2017 through 2021, bouncing between the Giants, Rangers, Tigers, and Phillies, Moore had a 5.89 ERA over 359 1/3 major league innings. He even spent 2020 pitching in Japan for the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks.
Relief role revived his career
Moore reinvented himself as a full-time reliever in 2022 and it worked. With Texas that year he logged a 1.95 ERA and 83 strikeouts in 74 innings across 63 games. Over two seasons with four teams (he also pitched for the Guardians and Marlins in 2023), Moore put together a 2.20 ERA in 126 2/3 relief innings. That version of him was genuinely effective.
But age and injuries caught back up. The 2024 season with the Angels was rough, and the forearm issue ended his year with about a month left. At this stage, he’s a lottery ticket for Kansas City — if he can get healthy and find that 2022 form again, he’s a useful bullpen arm. If not, he’s organizational depth who helps younger guys in camp.
If Moore does make it back to the big leagues with the Royals, he’ll be pitching for his ninth different MLB organization. That’s a lot of uniforms. It’s also a lot of persistence for a guy who was once on top of the prospect rankings and is still grinding.
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