Add new comment

We had a long discussion on it in spring of 2011.
1) SSI guaranteed his immediate rampage through the AL.
2) Most blogs guaranteed that lefties would leave him for dead.
3) LL, to their credit, was wait-and-see.
4) The Mariners shared my view, as evidenced by the fact that there was never the slightest debate about Pineda's rotation slot that March.  The M's weren't expecting Pineda to take any lumps at all, as of course he didn't.  Nobody with a Curt Schilling 98 MPH fastball thrown into a teacup is going to take lumps.
Fans were, naively, insisting that he needed a third pitch.  Neither the Yankees nor the Mariners ever attached that to Pineda's status as a top starter in the American League; there are all kinds of 2-pitcher starters in the major leagues.