3 Pineda quick link: Only injury can slow the Swamp-Thing. Well, I guess algae and branches and stuff slow the Swamp-Thing, but machetes and fire don't. You know.
Once in a while you run across a Strasburg, Beckett, Lincecum, whatever. If you can watch Michael Pineda for two innings and not realize that he's a better pitcher than, say, Jason Vargas ... you better ax somebody, dude.
Pineda isn't a prospect; he's the Mariners' best pitcher, other than Felix and Bedard. And it ain't like the baseball people don't get that. They've been smiling and No Commenting on him for two years.
March 2011 is the rollout. No point Strasburg'ing him to keep the 7th year; he's not going to make it to year seven in an upright position, much less throwing 97 mph.
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4i Kelley: This is where Kelley would rank, if healthy, and if they honored his request to start.
Almost nobody can paint at 94 mph, and almost nobody'er has the offspeed stuff to go with it, as Shawn Kelley does.
Kelley isn't real healthy, that we (at least, that I) know of. If he were, the Mariners only like 70% fastball mixes if thrown at low velocity, as with Fister, or from two feet off the ground, as with Snell.
PREDICTION IF IN THE ROTATION: 15-9, 3.40. If Kelley were placed in the rotaton in March, I'd join a roto league just to draft him. Gimme just two guys like this, I'll cobble an average pitching staff around them, draft ten hitters in ten rounds and crush the league.
If Kelley were throwing good in March and if they let him pitch, I'd be thrilled to start him Day Two. I haven't been this confident about a splash for a no-name since Paul Abbott was stuck in AAA.
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4 Fister quick link: "Legit soft-tosser. Skills progressed in 2H 2011 as stats regressed." - Shandler.
If Doogie's your #4 going into camp, you're awfully thin. If two guys ahead of him are (a) a rookie challenging for a spot and (b) a tragedy, you're even thinner. The M's certainly are.
That said, the Mariners have like six guys at #4-9 here who would have started Opening Day for the 1977 Mariners. Which isn't saying much, except it kinda is.
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A .350 BABIP ambushed Doogie in the second half; his 5.2 strikeout, 1-plus BB, HR-controlled game establishes him as a fair-to-middlin' soft-tosser in the big leagues.
Doogie will have a rough time cracking the 5.6, 5.7 DOM line that defines impact finesse pitchers, but his 5.2/1.7/1.0 line (and amazing control) will allow him to carve out a Paul Byrd, Bob Tewksbury career in the bigs.
Fister's ability is repeatable and demonstrated now. Barring injury he's got to have like an 80, 90% chance of 150+ starts.
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The sooner he's no longer in the M's top five, the better, but that ain't 2011, kiddies.
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PREDICTION IF HEALTHY: 12-12, 3.90, something like that. Safeco will probably stifle his ERA down just nominally into the threes.
Where did you hear that Kelley asked to be a starter? That is news to me. I'll just be happy if the kid can come back 100% from the partial TJ he had.
Hey, those images of Bedard and Kelley look awfully familiar.
Lonnie
They weren't sourced to you... kudos if you snapped 'em... what's the story?
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There were a few stories on it early last year or late 2009 Lon, with several quotes from Kelley about how he started in college or somesuch. The pitching coach sounded kind of bemused about such a weird request, but now there's a new regime...
Maybe someone can link us to one or two of the articles. It was in the papers, Kelley's request.
LOL! Ya, the shots are mine! Oh well, I guess that serves me right for not copywriting or watermarking them.
I've probably already mentioned this about a thousand times, but two years ago I got to have a nice talk with Shawn Kelley down in Spring Training. This was the spring before he made the travelling 25. Very nice kid and very intune to what he can do (IMHO). When I asked him where he though he would end up he wouldn't say, but when I said that a lot of us were pulling for him to make the Mariners he absolutely beamed.
Man, I love Spring Training! Just about 35 days until I head back down!
Lonnie
We could take them down, but since you're credited we're good? :- )
Thought they were taken by an SI photog or something. Wowza.
Started game vs. DBacks
2.0 IP, no baserunners, 1 K
ground out (Bloomie)-ground out-fly out (Justin Upton)-line out-ground out-strike out (Xavier Nady)
Can't argue with that.
While I'm here:
Gameday on Nate Robertson's start had him throwing 88-90 fastballs, 86-88 sinkers, 78-82 sliders and a single 83 change.
Will that cut it? Results were good: 2.0 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 3 K
[By the way, Gameday is not reporting radar gun numbers for Pineda's start -- that's why I didn't include any.]
On the staff, if not actually in the rotation. The vibe he says he gets is that Robertson was brought in to help the '11 M's. Believe he has a deal where he has to make the 25-man too (or else gets to walk or whatever).
Robertson is assuredly not SSI's kind of pitcher, but objectively speaking, he's probably one of the five or so most pivotal stories of early camp...
Hope he's mistaken on that one.
Though the Nats did so with Strasburg, I can't imagine the Mariners projecting Pineda to 1,000 IP over the next six years, and their losing control of him at the beginning of year 7.
Ackley, yes. Service time an issue for Pineda? That would be a REALLY optimistic long-term view :- )
Tui is essentially the same age as Carp and Mangini. Clearly, the experiment with 2b/SS is over (since they brought in about 8 dozen scrap heap middle infielders over the winter), but they don't seem to have ruled him out as corner IF/corner OF bench guy. They've had him at 1b in drills and in LF today (2-RBI single just a bit ago).
And out of those 3, he's the only RH bench option. Can he punch the reset button like Mangini did, or has he underwhelmed at the MLB level one too many times?
Per Drayer's blog: http://www.mynorthwest.com/category/mariners_blog_articles/20110302/Pine...
for the first appearance in spring, 98 mph is different than 98 in June...
We are talking about Brandon Morrow, if Morrow'd had Fister command right out of the box...
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Why Pineda has not been identified as a true monster spect of the game, is beyond me... if this guy were in the Bronx, they'd have golden ropes around the mound...
Everybody *likes* Pineda, but (e.g.) the major prospect blog, last year, had him #5 in the org ... Michael Pineda is more-or-less Felix level as a pitching prospect. Not *every* inch, but Pineda is a guy who can instantly become top-10 starter in the league and stay there.
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Keep the linx comin' Spec...
USA Today did give some spotlight to our man: No. 4 as a "Name You Need to Know."
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/al/mariners/2011-02-16-pineda_N.htm
Nothing wrong with a flame-throwing #2 with crazy-good K and control rates to back up our #1 Cy-Young-winning horse. Here's hoping our Liriano proves more durable :)
Liriano, btw, was the #83 prospect for BA in A ball, then injured his shoulder and missed most of 2003, after which he was unranked in AA and AAA even while destroying those leagues as a 20 year old.
I don't know how under-rated he is now though. Pineda's forearm/elbow scare frightened off some people in the beginning, but BA has him at #16 and Keith Law has him at #25, I think, in the minors.
Pitchers listed ahead of him by BA:
Teheran (basically Pineda last year)
Hellickson (Pineda this year)
Chapman (he throws 103 MPH, I get the attraction)
Taillon (best HS arm from last year and maybe for several years)
Shelby Miller (Pineda from 2 years ago, with 4 extra K/9 at the time)
Matt Moore (what we dream Paxton will be in the low minors)
I get it. Pineda's right there with all those guys. For me personally a pitcher who can throw like Pineda in AA and AAA gets a bump over HS pitchers who haven't really got pro experience, or low minors guys in their 4th pro season.
But Pineda's right up there with the prospect greats, as he should be. It's almost time for him to make grown men look like little kids swinging at moving T-ball stands.
Brandon Morrow with Fister command. Yeah, that's Liriano all right. Can't wait to see it in the regular season. :)
~G
"There's a spot in the rotation for him," Mariners general manager Jack Zduriencik says.
Is he referring to the spring training competition?
As The Emperor Foresaw, once Pineda got into camp and out-pitched everybody except Bedard, it was going to be hard to resist him...
Relatively speaking. Because of the injury time.
Most of the ballyhoo'ed guys have been on the seismo's consistently for awhile. It takes the national pundits a while to get comfortable with a prospect.
M's own scouts, though, you can find quotes talking about the Cy, going back about as far as Pineda's been an M...