Who is Matt Moore?

With all the craziness that led to the end of the baseball season, one more thing got fans scratching their heads.

The Tampa Bay Rays named Matt Moore their Game 1 starter for the American League Division Series.

Yes. Matt Moore.

Don't feel bad if you don't know who he is. It doesn't make you any less of a baseball fan. Matt Moore has pitched in three Major League baseball games for a grand total of 9 1/3 innings.

You can say he hasn't gotten a lot of exposure.

So, just who is he?

Here's Moore's rundown:

Moore is 2007 eighth round draft pick - the  same year as David Price. The 22-year-old is a lefty and has made just one career start. On Sept. 22, he went five innings against the New York Yankees, giving up just four hits and striking out 11.

Even though Moore just came up to the Majors, he has a number of baseball cards on the market - all prospect and no rookies.

The first card to look at for Moore is the 2011 Bowman Platinum Superfractor. Seems that seller picked the right time to list this card. Moore's first Bowman appearance came in 2009. Even these sellers were able to wait until Moore was more popular. Just in case you didn't have enough rare cards on Moore to choose from, the 1/1 parallel from Topps Pro Debut is even out there.

Sell Sell Sell

How many of us thought that at the end of May beginning of June that Matt Joyce would be leading the American League in batting average? I will tell you that I definitely didn't think so. He has a higher batting average than Albert Pujols.... Seriously.

Joyce is fairly new to the big leagues, his rookie cards are all 2008 and fairly inexpensive. Not that I am considering a new player to collect, but I thought it would be interesting to see how his cards were doing considering he has been on fire. Time will tell what kind of hitter he will be on a consistent basis, but he's a young guy so anything is possible.

There are plenty of rookie autographs on eBay, most of them are pretty cheap if you are looking for a young guy to collect. Take a look at a some of the ones I saw.

Matt Joyce Rookie Cards

Price speaks his mind, then apologizes

With a chance to clinch a spot in the postseason, the Tampa Bay Rays drew 12,446.

Think that’s bad?

Well, Rays pitcher David Price agrees.

Price wrote on his Twitter page last night: “Had a chance to clinch a post season spot tonight with about 10,000 fans in the stands....embarrassing”

Can’t say I blame him. Tampa Bay has been a solid team for three years now and even went to the World Series two years ago. Yet, it doesn’t seem the local fans have embraced the Rays even though they never have to worry about a game being rained out.

Price, however, felt the power of Twitter last night. About an hour after he wrote that tweet, he apologized for offending anyone.

But who is he offending? The people sitting at home reading his Twitter page? You shouldn’t be offended if you were supporting the team.

Preach on Price. Be proud of your team that you want fans to come and support you.

AL Playoff Preview

If anyone was unsure up until this point what the AL East was made of and why it is a tough division, you need to check out the Yankees and Rays game that took place last night. This game was the stuff that playoffs are made of and the type of game that showcases what great pitching does for a team, especially in a short series.

Despite the lack of fans in the stands (roughly 26,000) to see their team fight for first place, David Price came out like a prize fighter and gave the Rays everything he had. Yankees had C.C. Sabathia on the mound going for his 20th win of the season, and he and Price matched each other zero for zero the whole game. Sabathia threw 119 pitches over 8 innings striking out 9, while Price threw 114 pitches over 8 innings and had 4 strikeouts. You could not ask for more out of two starters than what Price and Sabathia gave their teams.

The game was turned over to the bullpen in the 9th with Rays closer Rafael Soriano
and Yankees pitcher Kerry Wood. While I will admit Kerry Wood pitching is still a little frightening for me to watch, he has been lights out with the Yankees. Maybe all he needed was a team that was fighting for something to be re-born. Both Soriano and Wood put up zeros in the 9th.... Benoit (Rays) and Logan/Gaudin put up zeros in the 10th despite Gaudin loading the bases and getting out of it on luck.

The Yankees came up empty in the 11th against Grant Balfour despite a leadoff hit by Austin Kearns. Mitre came in to lose, I mean, pitch in the 11th inning and gave up a leadoff homerun to Reid Brignac to end the game. The loss extends the Yankees to a 4 game losing streak, and the fans are on their 4th straight night of indigestion and Tums.

Despite the game outcome, the game was great with 2 Cy Young candidates battling it out for 8 strong innings.

Here are some rookie cards of Sabathia and Price:

C.C. Sabathia Rookies

David Price Rookies

Humor me and look....

Kerry Wood Rookies

This Kerry Wood on card auto is pretty nice for $10 and it's on card