Jon Moscot caught the eye of former pitching coach and now Cincinnati Reds manager Bryan Price earlier this spring. He made his first official appearance of the spring yesterday by tossing two shutout innings with a strikeout.
The more interesting thing about Moscot from yesterday though was what Hook, Line and Sinker writer Kourage Kundahl heard from the right hander last week when he was in Goodyear.
“I started throwing a real sinker this offseason that I was kind of missing last year,” Moscot said. “I’d run a ball into a right-hander, but it wouldn’t have the depth that I would want to get a ground ball on a double-play situation on a consistent basis.”
There are a lot of things that Moscot does well, but inducing grounders has never been one of those things. In the 2014 season, spent mostly in Pensacola but also with a brief call up to Louisville, the right hander had a groundball rate of 38%. The Major League average rate is 47%. In the 2013 season, split between Bakersfield and Pensacola, his groundball rate was 44%. That rate was better, but still below-average.
Unless Moscot scraps his 4-seamer in favor of the sinker, he probably won’t see any big gains in his groundball rate, but by adding in the pitch he can probably increase his groundball rate and in situations where he could use on, probably help himself out by improving the odds of getting one with a runner on base.