For better or worse, much has been made about Michael Pineda’s velocity so far in Spring Training. Last year, the young righty burst onto the scene as a fireballer, sitting in the mid-90′s and blowing guys away with that. So naturally, we expected a lot from him in terms of the fastball. You don’t need me to tell you that it hasn’t been exactly as advertised and there has been quite the controversy over it. My general feeling has been that it doesn’t matter much. This is spring training, after all, and it’d be foolish for pitchers to go all out. Others have shown varying degrees of concern ranging from curiosity to downright panic. While I’ve been relatively adamant about my laid back stance, there is a small part of me that is concerned about the lack of zip from Pineda. We’ve seen velocity drops from Phil Hughes and Joba Chamberlain in the past, so we’ve got reason to be wary. But, Pineda was apparently sitting at 93 during Tuesday night’s game and was solid outside of a rocky, 38 pitch first pitch inning.
I contemplated Pineda’s fastball velocity and wondered if maybe he was holding back more than normal, saving his arm for later in the year. The narrative (and some truth) for Pineda in 2011 was that he faded as the season went on. With that in mind, I took to Texas Leaguers to check on Pineda’s month by month velocity to see if his fastball got slower as the year wore on, thus affecting his performance. Check the table after the jump to see what I found.
| Month | FB MPH | ERA | FIP | xFIP | K% | BB% | HR/FB% | BABIP |
| 4/11 | 95.4 | 2.01 | 2.26 | 3.90 | 23.8 | 9.5 | 0.0 | .262 |
| 5/11 | 95.3 | 2.81 | 3.15 | 2.98 | 28.6 | 5.6 | 10.8 | .231 |
| 6/11 | 94.4 | 3.03 | 3.90 | 4.28 | 21.2 | 8.3 | 7.5 | .243 |
| 7/11 | 94.7 | 6.75 | 3.74 | 3.14 | 28.8 | 9.3 | 14.5 | .294 |
| 8/11 | 94.0 | 4.70 | 4.20 | 3.09 | 24.2 | 7.4 | 19.0 | .262 |
| 9/11 | 93.6 | 4.00 | 3.41 | 3.44 | 22.7 | 6.7 | 9.5 | .275 |
The peripherals say that tales of Pineda’s second half demise were vastly overblown. He kept up solid strikeout numbers, but his FIPs weren’t awful. His HR rates got a little nuts in July and August , but those look pretty damn fluky compared to the rest. My velocity hypothesis sort of held up, as Pineda was on the lower end of his velocity spectrum as the season got older. Maybe he’s aware of this and is trying to spread himself a little more evenly. Regardless of what I think, Pineda is a young pitcher who’s entering his second season as a Major League starter. He’s still learning exactly how to do what he does at the highest level. I won’t be concerned unless this carries over well into the regular season, and if we see a diminishing returns on his slider and nascent changeup. One thing to remember, too, Pineda may not be gunning it up to 95 every time he throws number 1, but it’s not like he’s sitting 84-86 and struggling to touch 90. That would probably make me scream, cry, and vomit all at once. Maybe it’s the rose-tinted Spring Training glasses, but my gut tells me that Michael Pineda is going to be just fine. (EDIT: 9:45 AM: Dave Cameron at FanGraphs touched on this back on the 6th when this controversy started).
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Fangraphs wrote an article a few weeks back about Pineda’s velocity, and it essentially agrees with what your saying. It actually shows that Pineda starts at low velocities ( 89-90 mph lows) early in games before unleashing the heat later. He’s essentially done/doing what Justin Verlander has done for years in ST and in the regular Season.
It’s really astounding how high Pineda’s baseball IQ is.
Just found it and I’m putting it in the post. Thanks for the tip.
I watched his start the other day. He definitely wasn’t sitting at 93, but like most of us on this blog I am not worried at all about this. He had NO command in the first inning, but came back and really dominated the next two. Like Cashman said yesterday or whenever, this guy is going to be good regardless of if he throws 97 mph. His slider is a great pitch and he was locating the fastball on both sides of the plate in that 2nd and 3rd inning (and struck out 5 of his last 6, although one was the pitcher).
Where are you getting “sitting at 93 during Tuesday night’s game”? He most certainly was not according to the YES gun. Not even close.
he did have more than a few 92 mph fb’s, he hit 93 mph seven or eight times and hit 94 mph once.
And that in no way constitutes “sitting at 93″. I mean, he had just as many 89′s as 93′s so by that method I could say he was sitting at 89. The fact is he average around 91 which isn’t much of an improvement.
Actually it is an improvement, averages are good for large sample sizes but can easily be skewed by a lower numbers.
Pineda’s velocity has been steadily increasing, that’s fact. he’s gone from 88-90 in his 1st start, to 89-91 the 2nd, 89-92 the third, to now being 89-93 with the max of 94. Him throwing 89 mph while also being just as capable of hitting higher, is a known aspect of his game. Even last year when his average was 95, he was just as likely to throw a 89-90 mph fastball as he was to throw a 97-98 mph.
If Cashman is right and Pineda did not throw much until ST started then he should be back to 95 when the season starts, or shortly thereafter. If he stays in the 92 range, then he could still be effective especially with an above average change up. His drop off at the end of the season last was probably due to fatigue. With the number of effective starters (that is if Pettitte becomes one) Girardi has the opportunity to spread out the work load and ensure that the entire staff is rested going into the post season. If Nova, Hughes or Pineda are sent to the minors I would like to see them limited to 5 innings per game. That would both reduce their work load and still keep them stretched out if suddenly needed back with the NYY.
You can’t limit a starter to 5 innings, that’s and awful way to reduce work load. You want starters to be able to go as deep as games as they can in the minors, they need the experience, and they need to understand how to turn a lineup over 3-4 times. You can’t expect anything more than a 5 inningh pitcher if you develop a 5 inningh pitcher.
In the minors you can skip starts and push starts back a few days, that’s how you manage work load. However Pineda doesn’t need his work loads managed at this point. He threw 170 innings last year, he’s good to go for 200. Nova may not be going a full 200 but he could easily go 180-190.
You make a good point on how to limit innings. But I’m concerned that if Pineda pitches 200 innings during the regular season he’ll start to wear down prior to the playoffs (of course, the team has to make the playoffs first). I’d prefer to avoid another 30 inning jump and hope they keep him at 185. And because of pitching so few innings last year, I’m concerned about Hughes when he hits 150 innings.
You aren’t going to be able to keep Pineda’s inninghs below 185 and have him pitch in the playoffs, at a certain point one has to take priority. If you’re going to baby his arm baby it, if you want him pitching come playoff time focus on that. Besides we don’t even know if Pineda will be pitching in the playoff rotation. If Kuroda assumes the number 2 starter role, Pettitte makes it back and is healthy come playoff time, and Nova has a similar year they could pack in Pineda and go with those 4. Or he could simply be the 4th starter. It’s more important to me to monitor how many pitches he’s throwing per inning, now so much total innings.
As far as Hughes we don’t even know if he’ll make it to 150 innings. He’s just as likely to be traded or sent to the pen as he is to be pitching over 150 innings. But when going off of verducci effect you use highest total inninghs reached, which for Hughes is 176. The Yankees will probably be going off of that, so Hughes could also throw 190+ innings this year.
You make some good points. But both of our arguments have so many ifs that it makes heads spin.
Yeah that’s why it’s best to just see how things shake out with Andy and Hughes first before making any plans. I’m just really against limiting innings per start with a developing pitcher. We wonder why none of our pitchers now a days can give us complete games, it’s because we never let them push themselves and put them in siutations in the minors to go 7, 8, or 9 innings. You shouldn’t be having them throw 150 pitches to get there, but the goal should be to try and extend expectations of how many innings per game a pitcher pitches. If you go through AAA without ever seeing the 8th inning you aren’t going to be seeing it, or the 7th much in the major leagues.