The Missing Piece: Mike Moore

Following the 1988 season, Mike Moore was at a crossroads. The first overall pick of the June 1981 amateur draft had spent seven seasons pitching for the Seattle Mariners in relative baseball obscurity. The team never had a winning record during Moore's tenure—more bluntly, the team lost a lot during Moore's seven seasons with three last-place finishes and a revolving door of four different managers trying to lead the team out of the cellar.¹ From this context, Moore was looking forward to his first time as a free agent and seeing which teams might provide him a better chance at winning.

"I had never lost at anything in my life until I got to the big leagues," Moore says. "I mean, it didn't matter whether it was tiddlywinks or checkers or whatever. Then you get there [to the Seattle Mariners, a losing team], and it's just not in your control anymore. You do what you can do, but, when you play on teams that suck, it's a hard deal."²

In a sense, the Oakland A's were at a crossroads as well. Although they had won the 1988 American League pennant, the team fell short in the World Series, losing four games to one to the Dodgers. The A's were loaded for success with power hitters Mark McGwire (thirty-two home runs in 1988) and that season's Most Valuable Player Jose Canseco, starting pitchers Dave Stewart (21-12) and Bob Welch (17-9), and Dennis Eckersley who transitioned from starting to relieving and who led the American League in saves (45) in 1988. Even with this core that delivered Oakland its first pennant since 1974, general manager Sandy Alderson and manager Tony LaRussa knew they were missing one critical piece. And, five days after the World Series ended, Alderson, LaRussa, pitching coach Dave Duncan, Walt Jocketty, the team's minor league director, and Ron Schueler, special assistant to Alderson, flew to Moore's house. Over cups of coffee in his living room, they told him he was the missing piece.

"You don't have to do anything here that you haven't done the last seven years in Seattle," LaRussa told him. "All you have to do is come here and throw your 200 innings, and we'll get back to the World Series. We need another workhorse. I don't need you to win twenty games. I just need you to come here and do your job like you have the last seven years—logging a lot of innings and taking the stress off the bullpen."

Alderson agreed. He told Moore the A's coveted him and tried to trade for him earlier that season, but the Mariners balked.

Moore was flattered. He was impressed by how quickly Oakland's top brass identified him as a priority and invited him to join their team. He was humbled that Alderson, LaRussa, and the A's management team visited him in person to tell him they wanted him. And, he thought about that core of good hitting, starting pitching, the elite closer, and the excellent defense provided by Carney Lansford at third, Walt Weiss at shortstop, Mike Gallego at second, and Terry Steinbach and Ron Hassey behind the plate.

No other team compared. So, Moore signed a three-year, $3.9 million deal to play for Oakland—a team that won 104 games in 1988, 35.5 games ahead of Seattle in the Western Division standings—and joined a winner.

Joining a winner

By the end of his first month in Oakland, Moore was proving the missing piece tag fitting. The A's were 18-8, just one game behind the Texas Rangers in the American League West. Moore was 3-1 with a 1.91 ERA and loving being a part of a winning team and atmosphere. The team clicked. After a game, groups of teammates would hang out and grab a meal together instead of splitting in twenty-five different directions.

"I can remember we got into Detroit," Moore says. "We're talking 2:00 in the...