After a great minor league season last year, the Puerto Rican lefty struggled in his cup of coffee last fall with the Twins.

This year, he's been much better. His change-up still looks like one of the best pitches on the team, but the big difference is that his fastball seems to have massively improved. He's been getting a number of swings and misses on it, even going through at-bats while throwing nothing else. It no longer is just a hittable set-up for his change, but quite possibly an average-to-good pitch in its own right,

Statcast's numbers appear to back up the eye test, albeit with some small-ish samples. Last year, Moran threw 85 fastballs, averaging a spin rate of 2150. This year, Moran has thrown 181 fastballs, averaging a spin rate of 2242. That's good enough to move from the bottom quartile of fastball spin to (just barely) the top half. As a result, his fastball has gone from 16 inches of drop to 13.6 inches of drop, which is exceptional (Alek Manoah's fastball has averaged 14 inches of drop). The Whiff% has increased from 25.6% to 34.8%.

At the same time, Moran's change hasn't changed its numbers significantly. I think his improved performance is entirely down to somehow figuring out how to turn his fastball into a credible pitch.

Would love for someone who knows more about this stuff to dig into it more deeply.

Sometimes it just takes a trip abck to the minorsd to work some things out. Hopefully the same is happening with Cano.

Moran has pitched much better for the Twins than he has for the Saints. In roughly the same amount of work, every stat looks better with the Twins--BB rate, K rate, H/IP, and WHIP.

He has walk issues that I would presume will come back to bite him, but his stuff looks pretty good. The fastball looks to be an acceptable major league pitch and the changeup is first rate.