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Pineda demolished RHPs so badly that he has a great chance of being effective at the MLB level right off the bat.
Maybe he has a large plattoon split at first, but hes so good vs RHP that it may not matter that much.
Pineda doesn't get hit by lefties, gentlemen (2)
Q. OK, his stats ring no alarms. How about from a scouting standpoint? Would you expect Pineda to have trouble with lefties, watching him throw?
A. Just the opposite. Pineda's main two pitches, the fastball and power curve, are just what you'd ask for if you were a RHP wanting to knock down lefties. Both in shape and in presentation :- )
Felix, when he came up, had a lot of armside run on his heater -- tailing away from lefties and therefore into the barrels of their bats.
Pineda, by contrast, throws an uncommonly straight Dennis Eckersley / Curt Schilling fastball. This might give him problemos against righties, in theory. But against lefties it would keep the ball in, on the barrels of their bats.
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A righty who throws a tilted slider, there's a guy who has platoon issues to solve. Pineda's slider isn't tilted. It's a 12-6 yellow hammer, shaped like Felix' slider or Doc Gooden's curve.
Does Felix' slider get hit by lefties? 'zackly.
Think Jeff Clement waving over the top of an inside drop pitch. That's an exaggeration of what lefties generally do on straight-dropping pitches (if the pitch bites, and doesn't hang).
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Q. How about Pineda's "tells"? How does that noise affect SSI's crunch of the platoon thing?
A. Both lefties and righties had the pitches against Pineda, at least in AAA. Like we said, we saw Pineda throw 85 pitches against the AAA Diamondbacks and --- > 85 pitches in a row, the Aces swung with a timing as though the catcher had told them the pitch.
Not one time did I see a hitter in front of a slider, or "in between" on a fastball. (He whipped them anyway, but they did get two homers as a result.)
This means what regarding the LH/RH split? That if a lefty can't do any better than 11:30 EYE against him than he did, having the pitches, that he's not seeing Pineda well period.
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These are the complaints we would have for 2011. If he telegraphs the offspeed, even to a lesser degree, he'll give up homers to both sides.
Also, his command is in developmental stages. He'll hit the mitt like Moyer 6 times out of ten, and then he'll tube one 2 times out of ten, like Felix 2007.
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Q. Does Pineda need a change against lefties?
A. Here's one guy I actually would like to see use a changeup as part of his arsenal.
You know that SSI has nothing against 2-pitch pitchers :- ) ... and I can't even tell you exactly why ... but here's one guy I would like to see pay a lot of attention to a third pitch.
Maybe it's that his game is going to be based on command. Maybe it's the Pedro template, and the way that Pedro's change made hitters be aware of the front and back of the strike zone. Maybe it's that the fastball is straight. But I wouldn't prefer to see Pineda pitch like Josh Beckett.
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The good news is, Pineda had a real good changeup last year. It was 86-88 and the bottom fell out of it. His changeup was a feature pitch.
Ask anybody ... who knows, that is. ;- )
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Q. But does he need a change vs LHB's?
A. Don't let anybody tell ya that a well-located FB doesn't get lefties out. Jered Weaver came up with two pitches -- a located FB and a slider that bent into lefties -- and he wiped LHB's out. Location will get 'em from either side.
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