The mainframe has its 1,024 primary coprocessors locked, loaded, and ready to crunch electron scum...

Watching channel 7 and their pregame Super Bowl keys, we can heartily endorse.  At the same time, you'd be disappointed if channel 4 didn't have its own take on the pregame keys, and here be mine.

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=== 30,000-foot View, Dept. ===

Pineda's unique combination of [velocity with command], is a given.  Pineda can bring the heat, and can bring it to spots, end of story.

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Whether there are holdups to his coronation, that depends, in my view, on two things.  (1) Tipping and (2) frequency of mistakes.

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Whether Pineda becomes better than SSI thought, whether he amplifies that lethal combination, that depends on three things:  (1) mistake avoidance, (2) secondary pitches, and (3) extra velo.

This is interesting, but not material to the question of whether he is better than Doug Fister and Jason Vargas. He is.

This kid is going to be good.  How quickly, or whether, he becomes great isn't so important, but will be fun to watch.

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=== EXEC SUM Dept. ===

Pineda will star in the American League slower than expected if:

• He is still telegraphing his pitches -OR-
• He leaves too many fastballs out-and-over, as he has done at times (gopheritis)

Pineda will star in the American League faster than expected if:

• He is throwing harder than 94-96 -OR-
• He leaves very few fastballs in the danger zone -OR-
• His slider and/or change have bite, and can be thrown for called strikes

So, what SSI will be cross-checking:

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=== Holdup #1 - Hitters In-Between ===

When Pineda goes to the slider and change, you want to occasionally see batters flinch.  Flinch in the sense of, "launching against the fastball" and then holding back as they read that the pitch is offspeed.

Late last year, at Cheney, I saw an 85-pitch game in which no batter, not a single pitch, offered a half-position against a fastball, holding up because the pitch was offspeed.

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Pineda's telegraphing is my number one (actually, only) worry.  Gimme three batters in between, three pitches that is, and I'm good.

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=== Holdup #2 - Mistake Fastballs ===

Pineda will tear a bunch of catchers' gloves off with perfectly-located 95 airburners.  

But he'll also (probably) miss with a certain fastballs out-and-over.  The catcher's mitt will be located, but the ball will be up and centered.

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All pitchers do this, except Cliff Lee, but Michael Pineda is 14 years old and his mechanics aren't fully evolved.

1-2 out-and-over pitches per inning are okay.  1-2 pitches per batter, like Felix did in 2007-08, are not. 

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BaseballHQ used to call this "mistake avoidance"; later they changed it to simple groundball/flyball ratio.  

But!  You can only assume that GB% is proportional to HR% at a certain (very high) level of major league competence.  There is a point of competence below "major league mistake avoidance", and Felix was below that during the 2008-09 seasons.

I don't know how well Michael Pineda avoids centered fastballs over the course of a game -- whether he keeps that number to the same number that (say) Jason Vargas does.

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Those are the two things that could, conceivably, cause a holdup in Pineda's march to stardom.

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