Add new comment

1

I agree, Ackley is a good A-, but that's based on a belief that power will come and the average will be good.  I can come up with reasons (or make excuses) why that will happen, but Sickels is a believer that it will as well because he's still an A- in John's book too.  However, Pineda was far more dominant at AA than Ackley, so I have no problem with the rankings.
I would trade Pineda before I'd trade Ackley, but that's because all pitchers are injury risks, and he's more likely to miss significant time or become useless than Ackley is.
Still, pitching risk is not the same as pitching doom.
Jeff Nelson threw 1460 innings with a motion that should have landed him on the DL immediately.
Kevin Brown had a potential HOF career with a crazy, effort-laden motion that got him injured.  He threw 3570 innings as a pro, with 11 seasons over 180 IP and 7 over 210.
Let's not go into what Lincecum's motion has netted him.
Pineda may have the sort of arm that can survive his pitching motion for thousands of innings.  Or he may go Liriano/Pryor on us and fizzle out spectacularly.
Currently, I don't see how his "sky high" stock would add us anybody we want who can compete with the immediate #2 potential of Pineda.  Who would you try to get with Pineda as the major chip?
If we'd been able to land Upton for him, I was willing to do that as I'm sure you were.  Since they apparently wanted Pineda + Upton + Smoak that wasn't in the cards.
I don't see how we get our money's worth for him in trade.  If he works out he's a bonafide TOR starter.  If he breaks he's worth practically nothing for at least a few years.  And other teams know that too, which is why it's really rare to see a prime player traded for any one pitching prospect.  Teams hedge their bets by getting handfuls of pitchers and hoping one can stay healthy, or by combining them with hitting prospects. 
I can't see who Pineda would get us as a headliner.  It'd be a prospect package.  I'd still do it for the right guy, but unless I can get Rasmus or someone I don't see how it works out in our favor. We have plans for all our up-and-coming hitters - there's no surplus yet.  And we're years away on starting pitchers not named Pineda or Robles to boot.  I don't see how you cash him in at this point for fair value.
That's the risk with starters.  I remember the Dodgers hating Pedro Martinez's motion (and build) so much they traded him for Delino Deshields.  They figured there was no way his body would hold up to the rigors of 200 innings a year.
And they were right, he got injured and broke down and lost several MPH off his fastball.
While that was happening he was just the most dominant pitcher in baseball.  *shrugs*  I can say I don't like a guy's motion, but I've given up trying to predict injury based on a checklist.
Some guys have terrible mechanics and throw for decades, and others have perfect mechanics but get hurt anyway.  It's a crapshoot.
I wouldn't give current-mechanics-Pineda Felix's extension, but I'm more than happy to let him throw for me as a $350k player and try to smooth some things out while he destroys RHBs for me.
~G

Filtered HTML

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd><p><br>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

shout_filter

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.