=== IP 7 - Drew Butera - Out ===
Hey, Mr. Frederiksen, check out the Snipe over there! Pitch one, Pineda missed by a blinkin' foot. Had you forgotten that some pitches are clearly balls or clearly strikes? The home plate ump had.
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Again it's the catcher up at the plate... and on 0-1 Pineda comes back with three different fastballs. The scouts refer to these as separate weapons: "he's got the fastball in, he'll throw the fastball away on you, he'll take you up the ladder."
This is actually a hackneyed pitch sequence, provided that you're Greg Maddux or Christy Mathewson.
If you assume that one pitcher can throw three consecutive pitches into any predetermined six-inch target area, here is the classic order in which he does so:
On 1-and-2, Pineda shrugs goes to the wipeout slider, much like Randy Johnson used to on 1-2. Butera did well to avoid the strikeout.
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=== Dr's Diagnosis ===
You've seen eight typical AB's, and you see the specific reasons why batters sometimes say "I was doing well to put the ball in play on him."
It's not a cliche. Sometimes the pitcher works to 2 strikes, throws a vicious strikeout pitch, and it is only the ML hitter's superhuman reflexes and pitch recog that allows him to touch the ball with the bat.
The moral of the story is: baseball isn't always as simple as Pascal's Triangle and BABIP. Great pitching does beat great hitting.
I mean, the Twinkies aren't great, of course, but "pitching beats hitting" means that you're not going to score five runs on pitches like those.
The batter needs a hittable pitch, and it's up to the pitcher to give him one. If Tim Lincecum loses to Clayton Kershaw by a score of 2-1, that doesn't mean that hitting beats pitching...
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=== How Good Is Michael Pineda? ===
The Twinkies are in a slump. But you can see for yourself the pitch execution on May 16.
The word "scary" gets tossed around a lot. But this man is pitching like Jamie Moyer if Moyer had Kerry Wood's stuff.
How do they ever get on base? They take yellow-bellied sap-suckin' cowardly pepper swings and hope that Pineda supplies the power.
If you don't strike a guy out, the ball can fall in, and major league hitters can punch-bunt tough pitches. Even Randy Johnson gave up runs.
Vince Vaughn in one of his movies runs a video touchdown on a friend and deadpans, "but how did you feeeeeeel about that play?"
From a $/WAR standpoint, Michael Pineda parachuting into Safeco as an instant superstar is --- > like signing Roy Halladay longterm for the minimum. From my standpoint, it places on Royal Brougham the obligation to go win a pennant. Hey, man. Gimme Felix and Pineda and Smoak and I could win a pennant.
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Be Afraid,
Dr D
Excited enough Doc? :-)
Pineda throws a bunch of first strikes, tons ofs swing-and-misses, weak contact, lots of pop ups. There are no weaknesses. He has a high flyball rate, but he gives up short fly balls.
He has been amazingly good.
Get 'em four or five runs a game, get 'em up front in the division, and we'll make SSI an animal house :- )
Brooks and MLB.com's GameTracker had Pineda throwing 93-96, which is down about 1.5 mph. But Fangraphs still has his yearly velocity at exactly the same 96.0.
Pineda's action was smoother to me, and the ROOT readings were 94-96, but will admit that I might have been deceived about the actual velocity (by the readings and the arm action).
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Op-ed above is based on the idea that Pineda traded some velocity for (even more) location. If he were simply acquiring more location and still throwing 95-99 on the fast gun... take the op-ed and square it.
The kid's amazing. Never seen anybody exactly like him.
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All the strike threes in 38 seconds rightcheer: http://seattle.mariners.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=14879961
...whether Michael Pineda is actually better than King Felix? i.e. might have an even better chance to throw 5 no-nos, win 25 games some year etc? Felix is consistently outstanding...but...can he dominate the way that Pineda can?
But Liriano was never the strike-throwing machine that Pineda is (until last year I guess, once he'd lost a foot off his FB after injuries), and his pitch breakdown was more the 50% FB/ 30% slider / 20% change.
I agree with you, Pineda doesn't need the change. His slider IS his change.
Felix is better IMO because you know he can go 240 innings with these great performances without breaking a sweat and be in the Cy Young race at will now, apparently. We're just hoping Pineda can do this for a few years. But how you feel about Pineda vs. Felix is more a matter of style.
I like em both. :)
Now the clock is REALLY ticking on Jack Zduriencik though. We have TWO Cy Young level pitchers on our team...and 2/3 of a MOTO built out of a DH who can't slug .300 and a 55 OPS+ catcher. The offense goes:
Smoak, 169 OPS+
Kennedy, 107 OPS+ (utility)
Ichiro, 105 OPS+
Cust, 98 OPS+ (built entirely off OBP)
...
Luis Rodruigez is our next best at seventy freaking one? Really? By qualified batters it's actually Figgins at 66, followed by Jack Wilson's 65, Olivo's 56, Ryan's 54 and Saunders brings up the (horse's) rear at a nice even 40.
If Ackley came up and posted an 80 he'd be the 5th best offensive player on the team. With his on-base skills he's more likely to post Cust's 98, but we still need guys to drive him in, and better patches on five gaping black holes in the lineup.
We need offense NOW. We have a two headed hydra breathing fire and destruction at the top of the rotation. (cue pic from Willow)
Pitching is volatile. Get me some durn hitters before one of them hits the wall. We're now officially building toward being the 2001 Diamondbacks. Get on with it, quickly if you please.
~G
He can and he has. And for much longer stretches and more years too.
But don't hold that against Pineda. He hasn't been around long. :)
What's scary about this rotation, is that we're in the middle of Felix's slow period. Generally after tossing a couple good games to start the season, he's mediocre in April, inconsistent in May, and then sometime in June finally says "Whatever," and proceeds to turn the league on its ear.
If Pineda and Fister have the stamina to keep this up all year and Bedard continues to re-discover himself, then this buzzsaw of a rotation is only just gettin spinnin.
One advantage that young Pineda has over young Felix (his first 4 years) is that he doesn't have to be continually run through the teeth of the Mariner coaching collective to "establish the Fastball" and "paint the black."
Took Felix a few seasons to get that down before he was able to cut loose.
Pineda already does both those things just fine. :)
Whether the bigger advantage to Pineda is that he's already mastered important pitching weapons or that he doesn't have to be henpecked by M's coaches is up for debate. :P
It won't sense the moisture!