Q.  Pineda actually seems to be better in the PCL than he was at West Tenn.  Is he?

A.  Sure.  For example, his K's were 8-something in AA.  They are well over 12 in the PCL.

.

Q.  Is that a short-sample fluke?

A.  Not at all.  Pineda will continue to deep-fry the PCL this way until he's called up.  Was Felix going to stop doing what he was doing in AAA?

.

Q.  How could this happen, that Pineda's strikeouts increased by 30% when he moved up to face tougher hitters?

A.  This happens sometimes, with great pitchers.

Back when Tim Lincecum was wiping out the minor leagues, we got into huge flame wars over whether Lincecum was ready for the majors.  "You idiot, Dr. D!  He walked 4.5 men a game in college, and he's walking 4.0 in the low minors!  What's that going to be in the majors?!  6, 7, 8 men a game?"

No, it will be about 3 a game in the majors, argued Dr. D.

HAW HAW HAW, replied Dr. D's adversaries, reasonably... :- )

Lincecum's BB rate immediately dropped into normal range when he got to the majors.

.

Q.  A pitcher's peripheral stats can improve as he moves up?

A.  Yeah, but we were cheating.  We'd been through the same argument ten years earlier, with Kerry Wood.  Wood had BB'ed 6-8 men per game in the minors, but this dropped to a very acceptable 4.5 in the majors.

We thought Freddy Garcia was going to be another example of this -- a guy whose game was actually better suited to the precision environment of the AL than it was suited to the randomized, streetball contexts of the minors. 

This turned out to be the case.   Freddy was looking kind of pedestrian in A+ and in AA, but Roger Jongewaard knew that his game was going to translate into something special at the big league level.  It did.

.

Q.  The umps are better?

A.  That's part of it, but it's not the main thing.  Umps are good in high school, much less in AA baseball.  Don't oversell the ump'ing part of it.  It matters, but it's not the game-breaker.

.

Q.  What, then?

A.  A friend of ours used to be a star Pac-10 basketball player, a point guard.  He refused to play 3-on-3 on the street for a lot of reasons, one reason being that couldn't win there.

He used to tell me, Jeff, there are 1,000's of guys who can tear me to shreds in 3-on-3.  But you get them into a real basketball game with me and they don't have a chance.

The skills apply differently as the environment becomes more precise and more controlled. You get it?

.....................

A 3-on-3 hoops game at the park in Renton, the defense and fouls are different.  A back-cut doesn't matter as much if the guy's just going to nail you with a hip or a knee as you go by.  All of a sudden it's just banging in the paint and a straight-up outside shot.

Michael Pineda had been, at West Tenn, in pitcher-batter matchups that were more akin to 3-on-3 street ball than they were to top-level pro matchups.  It's not usually good for a developing athlete to under-challenge him.  He can get sloppy that way.

.

Part 2