Part 2

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Q.  So what's Pineda's future?

A.  Well, if the reports on Pineda are anywhere near accurate, he is one of the five or 10 best pitching prospects in all of organized baseball.

Let everybody else take a year or two to come up to speed on him, and to get comfortable thinking of him as a superstar.  At SSI we call things by their right names.  Pineda's a monster Grade A+ prospect, one of the 10 best pitching prospects in baseball, health questions notwithstanding.

Pineda was a blue-chip, Grade A prospect back when he threw 92-96.  Now, he has apparently put on a bunch of weight and throws upper 90's.  That's pretty much like going from Don Sutton to Bob Gibson.

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Q.  Yeah, but his career arc?

A.  Again the caveat:  if the reports are even close to accurate, he'll go to AA and incinerate the batters there.  Learning absolutely zero as he does it.

Presumably, if his elbow is holding up -- guess here is that it probably will -- the ongoing joke in West Tenn will be cut short around June, and we'll get to enjoy his performances in Cheney for the second half.

But, the M's did call up Lowe straight from AA when he was, quote, "throwing the stuffing out of the ball."  If Pineda's feeling good, I suppose that's not impossible for him too.

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SSI will consider this entire Pineda season a bit of a charade, as Strasburg's tour of the minors will be a lot of a charade.

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Q.  Oh, c'mon.  Pineda can work on stuff in the minors.

A.  As he could in the majors, like RRS is working on his cutter, Kelley on his change, Vargas on staying away from his curve, etc.

How's he going to work on location?  He's already got better location than any Mariner pitcher other than the two Cy Young guys.

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Q.  How do you tell whether he's a starter or pitcher?

A.  I had to find my own tendinitis limits by trial-and-error.  There was no other way.  Biofeedback.

You throw 80 pitches* and you need three advil?  Fine. You throw 110 pitches and your arm still hurts three days later?  That's too much (although a lot of ML pitchers do precisely this -- and go into their next starts still hurting from the last one).

You figure out your own limitations by the pain after the game (and there will be transitory pain, every game, for a guy with tendinitis).

There isn't a thing in the world to do but to pitch Pineda, keep an eye on what bothers his elbow and what doesn't.

Last year, he threw a nice string of 8 starts and, at age 20, pushed way past his limitations, since he had to be shut down for the year.  The year before, he started 20 games and was fine.

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Q.  Exec Sum?

A.  Having shared something that sounds a lot like Pineda's elbow syndrome, Dr. D can say that the elbow thing doesn't scare him nearly as much as it does most amigos.

Most young pitchers get hurt.  The rest of them pitch in pain.  It will be fascinating to see how Pineda does in 2010.  If he does shut down early again, sure, maybe he's made of paper and will have to be a closer.  If Pineda handles 20+ starts, all's well by SSI.

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Pineda right now is getting credit for being an exciting prospect.  Nada.  He's one of the 10 best pitching prospects in the game.

Cheers,

Dr D