WHY PINEDA HAS ACE POTENTIAL...A SABERMETRIC VIEW

In case you didn't read it, check out my piece titled WHY I HAVE MIXED EMOTIONS REGARDING MONTERO FOR PINEDA. In it, I made the statement that Michael Pineda enters the Yankee rotation as a number two starter right away. In fact, I'm willing to go as far as Pineda being able to be a number one type starter down the road, maybe not quite next year, he's still young and has to fine tune his craft. More on that in a bit. But, this guy is /was highly regarded in the Mariners' organization, as he was their number one prospect going into the 2011 season, read HERE. There will be plenty of pressure for Pineda to perform, but I bet he can handle it just fine.

First, lets look at Pineda's full numbers last year:

9-10, 3.74/3.42/3.53 (ERA/FIP/xFIP),
171 IP, 9.1 K/9, 2.9 BB/9, 0.95 HR/9, 36.3 GB %, 3.4 WAR

Not too shabby, if you ask me. Pineda's 3.4 WAR is 12th highest among rookie starting pitchers since the year 2000. The list spans 483 pitchers, and Pineda's rookie campaign in terms of WAR is better than Tim Lincecum's, Justin Verlander's, CC Sabathia's, Felix Hernandez's, Jered Weaver's, Cliff Lee's, and Roy Halladay's rookie seasons, just to name a few. And to add onto his impressive rookie season, he led all of major league baseball in swing and miss percentage with a 11.8% rate.

Although those are some impressive numbers, there are some numbers that get me a tad worried. First, his ground ball rate. His 36.3% ground ball rate ranks 88th out of 94 qualifiers in 2011. But after reading THIS piece by Dave Cameron at Fangraphs, I was relieved. His ground ball rates in the final three months were definitely passable, 40.6% in July, 46.8% in August, and 45.3% in September. In the minors, Pineda's ground ball/fly ball ratio was as high as 1.69 in 2009 and as low as 1.02 in 2010, while his GB/FB ratio last year as a Mariner was 0.72. But the way Pineda uses his 94.7 mph fastball, it's clear that you can tell why he's a flyball pitcher. Take a look at the heat map below:

(courtesy of ESPN)
Also, his home run rate of 0.95 HR/9 (42nd highest out of 92 qualifiers) scares me a bit--considerng he'll be pitching his home games at Yankee Stadium--because he played his home games in spacious SafeCo field. But, oddly enough, his home run rate was worse at home (1.05 HR/9) than on the road (0.86 HR/9) in 2011. So take that for what it's worth.

Michael Pineda is mainly a two pitch pitcher; four-seam fastball and slider, he also has a change up, two-seamer, and cutter, but the latter three are hardly used. More on that in a moment. Here's a scouting report of Pineda's prior to the 2011 season. Read it right HERE. It said his plus pitches are his fastball (which still s) and his change up, while his slider needed work. Well, based on his 2011 season, his slider and change up have flipped spots in that regard. If his change up gets back to the above-average status like it was before he reached the bigs, he'll for sure be a frontline starter going foward. Take a look at Pineda's pitch selection graph from 2011....
Before you head on your way, I wanted conclude by sharing this interesting Tweet HERE. It's Brian Cashman saying the trade will be viewed as a mistake if Pineda doesn't pitch like a number one starter, while improving his change-up in the process. Talk about putting a lot of pressure on the new guy, no? Hopefully Pineda can live up to those expectations, and quite frankly, I think he can.




--Jesse Schindler, BYB Staff Writer



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