=== Schilling 1998 ff ===
By the time Schilling got to about age 30-32, he had developed a Roger Clemens splitfinger. He threw it a couple of times an inning, but that was not the key to his big leap in strikeouts.
What happened was that Schilling stopped "pitching to contact," started going after strike three up in the zone, and started racking up the 300-K seasons.
Tim McCarver remarked on Schilling's ability to set batters up with the located fastball and then to blow them away with the high "ladder" fastball:
"Schilling has changed from being an occasional sinkerballer who would throw the slower two-seamer down in the strike zone after getting two strikes on the batter. Now he is a pitcher who almost always will stick with the high four-seam 95-mph fastball with two strikes. He didn't get 319 strikeouts [last year] with sinkers" (McCarver, Baseball for Brain Surgeons and Other Fans, 1998).
Schilling, by 1998, was whipsawing this "exploding" 95-mph high fastball with an occasional splitfinger. As you see from the 2005 chart, Schilling still threw a full 70% fastballs -- which would lead the league -- even as an old man.
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=== A Pineda-Soriano Career Arc ===
If Pineda's elbow doesn't hold up, he's going to be Rafael Soriano, except better. Raffy didn't have much command within the zone, much less Doug Fister command.
Seeing as how Rafael Soriano's career TTO line is 9.8 / 2.7 / 0.9, that would make Pineda one of the game's great closers.
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=== A Pineda - Schilling Career Arc ===
If Pineda's elbow does hold up -- and he's a huge, powerful man with a very high strikeout rate, so the odds aren't bad --
(1) He could be very effective immediately, just moving a plus-plus fastball around the strike zone to any extent. Bartolo Colon and the young Curt Schilling are examples. Pineda doesn't need plus-plus command to accomplish that. He just needs better than Brandon Morrow "minus" command.
(2) If and when Pineda developed the ability to hit spots the way Doogie does, then bam, right there he's looking at Curt Schilling's prime. And scouts have been crediting Pineda with incredible command, since Pineda was in low-A ball.
(3) If and when Pineda then added any second pitch that dropped down out of the zone, then he's got what Schilling had in Arizona and Boston.
.................
SSI suspects that the Mariners know precisely what they've got in Michael Pineda, but that they are understandably white-knuckle about the elbow.
There aren't a lot of pitchers in the game who stand in the intersection of [95 mph] and [Doug Fister command]. Those who do stand in that intersection, become Bartolo Colon or somebody.
Disappointing season. Thrilling prospect.
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Cheers,
Dr D
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