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Love Moran.
He's a very interesting Sherrill-like pitcher.  My favorite thing about scouting profiles is stuff like "lack of a quality off-speed pitch further compromises his prospect status. Still, a statistics-based organization may look at Moran's gaudy numbers and overdraft him in a round not befitting his inferior stuff"
It just makes me laugh.  A guy strikes out 12.6 batters per 9 over 2 full seasons with ridiculous control (meaning it's ALWAYS in the zone, guys just can't hit it), makes top prospects look stupid, and the hangup is that he's doing it all with basically one pitch? In college, where guys swing bunt for basehits with those stupid metal bats? That's not "inferior stuff."  That's one hellacious pitch looking for a mate to take to the major leagues.
Guys pick up new pitches all the time.  JJ Putz picked up a forkball in 48 hours from Eddie.
You don't want to bet that a guy with 4 mediocre-minus pitches will suddenly figure it out, but the strange moonball look of Moran's fastball makes it a plus weapon.  Guys are swinging through that all over the place.  In that sense, it's a lot like Sherrill's short-armed, where-did-that-come-from deception.
Now, having great control and striking out a lot of kids doesn't mean instant success. There was a kid that I liked as a starter a few years ago named Wes Roemer.  You wanna see a starting pitcher with control, that was the kid.  145K/7BB as a sophomore.  He's been good but not stellar in the minors, and his walks have gone up.  They kinda HAVE to go up when you face better hitters all the time.
But there's a place for that sort of prospect.  I'm looking forward to moving Brian Moran up the minors pretty rapidly.  He should be at High Desert before too long, and that's gonna be tough for him.  I think he'll pass the test just fine.
He may only have one pitch right now, but Rafael Soriano has done pretty well with 73% fastballs and 21% sliders.  He only throws 2 pitches, basically, and 3 out of 4 of em are fastballs.  Guys know what he's throwing.  They just can't hit it.
Find Moran a serviceable breaker and watch out, because his fastball is already a handful - 88 mph or not.
~G

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