Danny Moskos Bombed in AFL Rising Stars Game

First, the good news from last night's AFL Rising Stars game: Chase D'Arnaud and Jose Tabata both went 2-for-3. Neither of Tabata's hits left the infield, and the first of D'Arnaud's was a shallow fly that no one could get to, but Tabata looked good on the basepaths, and D'Arnaud's last hit was stung.

Daniel Moskos, though... the poor guy has nothing. The announcers said that the stadium gun had him as high as 92, but they also said that Tanner Scheppers hit 99 at least once. Scheppers looked great, mostly throwing fastball after fastball, but I'm still betting that gun was a little hot and Moskos was topping out at something like 90. Then there was the mystery of Moskos' supposedly brilliant slider, which he never seems to throw when I'm watching him pitch. What he does seem to throw are a couple of different fastballs, a terrible curveball that doesn't break much, and a change that has a bit of late movement and is actually a pretty good pitch. Now, boundaries between pitches aren't absolute, and so I suppose it's possible that someone might see what I saw as the curveball or the changeup and call it a slider. That's fine. But to say he has a good slider? I'm sorry, I just don't see it. 

I admit it might have been a little harder than usual to tell last night, since opposing batters swung at and made hard contact with almost everything Moskos threw. Overall, he allowed four runs on five hits, including three doubles and a homer, in two thirds of an inning. His defense didn't really help him, but opposing batters were still just destroying him.