| 24 June 2010
And if you’re lucky, sometimes it can also be about the baseball too, and the phenoms that stop on by on their way up the ladder. I was a bit delayed getting through the gates, which meant that between how Pineda has been pitching and the Rainiers have been hitting, I lost two and a half innings in twenty-five minutes. This meant that I didn’t really see Pineda at his first three innings dominance, but I did get to see him struggle a bit, which is as valuable as anything you’re going to get when trying to determine where a prospect stands.
The first out I get to see comes in the fourth, as Peter Bourjos loops a 92 mph pitch to Wilson in left. These are my first impressions of Pineda: he’s a big guy, but more loose-limbed than I really anticipated, at least looking at him from the far-end of the first base side. He’s throwing 94, 97 mph and it’s all coming just as easily as everyone says it does. It’s a shame that he’s only hitting the zone half the time. After a breaking ball misses low, Pineda pumps two 95 mph straight down the middle and Nate Sutton looks no better than anyone I saw in Everett on Monday swinging through the second of those two. Pineda is now sitting in the mid-90s. Sitting. He’ll go down to 92, 91 as brings in the cutter for show, but otherwise it’s just nonstop heat.
The three-ball counts, however, are starting to catch up to him and everything he’s throwing seems to be missing high. No one seems to be fooled bad enough to try to swing on them, though Michael Ryan, after seeing the first three pitches miss, has enough sense to foul off the second and third strikes and wait for another ball to come in. Moore comes out and starts talking to Pineda. I look at the scoreboard and see a big zero by the Bees’ hit totals and recognize that this must be the first baserunner Pineda has allowed and that somehow warranted a visit.
What does Moore say? “You’re the top pitching prospect in the system, so throw like it?” Probably not, but the revelation that he wasn’t getting on top of his pitches enough apparently comes later, because three fastballs around 95 mph all come in up or away. Sick pitches all of them, but without any luck in finding the zone. A called strike later, Trumbo walks on five pitches. Cory Aldridge has other ideas than the ones that worked for the previous two batters, though, and loops one to left for an out quite similar to the first I saw.
As I’m here mainly to check out Pineda, having never seen him before, the hitting portion of the inning plays like a kind of intermission. I note that Halman checked his swing on a pitch, then refused to offer, and finally lined something into the left field corner for a double, and that Mike Wilson hit the second pitch he saw into the parking lot behind Cheney, and that Chris Woodward has enormous ears. Mostly, I’m just waiting it out, and the two runs are a nice bonus and little more.
The fifth inning opens with Pineda throwing a cutter which misses inside to Hank Conger, and then another pitch that misses down. The Bees, or at least the smarter ones, have lost interest in swinging and are now eager to let Pineda get himself into trouble. Two pitches later, Conger is sitting at first and the alarmist voice in my brain is going “he doesn’t seem to be having any loss of velocity, but he can’t find the zone, so is he having elbow troubles?” and I spend about five seconds quietly panicking.
Paul McAnulty is at the plate now. Paul McAnulty is still playing baseball, or so I think to myself because at the time he doesn’t look to me like a guy who is merely four years older than I am. Paul McAnulty looks like in ten or fifteen years he might be a duplicate the friend’s dad who bought you guys cheap beers in your early teens when you were camping out in his backyard because boys will be boys and all that. If, that is, you had a childhood like that. McAnulty hits the fourth pitch he sees in front of David Winfree. It’s the first hit Pineda has allowed all night, but phenoms aren’t supposed to do this and I’m about to make a fuss.
Who is this Terry Evans fellow? He should strike out posthaste. My earlier panic about Pineda missing the zone is not at all being helped by the fact that the stadium gun is now aimed at Moore's tosses back and not pitches, reading things like 46 mph, which I and everyone else knows is a lie. Strike one goes down the little, and while I hope for 2-for-2, the second one misses. A foul later and Pineda’s ahead again. He fouls again and it feels like he’s fouled the same pitch off five times in my mind. The fifth pitch of the at-bat is taken low for a called strike and Evans is sent packing.
The shortstop follows. I figure he’s the number nine hitter without even looking at the scoreboard because the first pitch he sees, he offers bunt at, and takes the pitch while I take offense at our pitcher being so grossly mistreated. The gun is back to reading 94 mph, which is a kind of comfort. On the fourth pitch, he bounces one to Nelson, who plods his way to the bag while the other two jerks advance.
This brings in Bourjos for another go at it. The first is 74 mph and down in the zone a bit, but a strike nonetheless. Pineda just threw a first pitch offspeed with two men on. Good news! So is the second pitch, which I don’t have a gun reading for, but produces an ugly swing. The third pitch is another breaking ball, which Bourjos swings on despite being both low and away. The ball gets away from Moore a bit, but being in front of him, Bourjos gets thrown out and all trouble is averted with little to show for it, save the moral victory of getting the first hit of the evening.
The intermission lasts a bit longer this time. I marvel at two hits from Tuiasosopo and Moore and wonder to myself how they have had such difficulty with major league pitching. Nelson hits a double to right field which Moore can’t get around third on. Winfree sacrifices to left, Moore scores, and the Hannahan and Halman both walk and I’m pleased to see it, but at the same time I kind of want to see more pitching and Wilson is gracious enough to ground out to short.
By this time, the sun has gone behind the trees opposite me and I’m no longer holding up my program as a visor and trying to type at the same time. Pineda’s arm, from my angle, really does whip through the zone, but it doesn’t seem quite as violent as I expected, not that I can even tell what armslot he’s throwing in from where I sit. Nate Sutton takes three pitches all around the same place, a 91 mph called strike, a 92 mph called strike, and then grounds the 94 mph fastball to Nelson. Pineda seems to be back in business now.
Michael Ryan gets a similarly brutal treatment. After first pitch ball low in the zone, he fouls a 92 mph heater way back, takes another and grounds something clocking at 86 over to Hannahan, who leisurely tosses to Nelson to make it two outs in the span of seven pitches. This is what I came here to see, of course.
One of the earlier walks, Mark Trumbo, arrives at the plate again with the hopes of getting something started. Little does he know. Pineda starts him out with a 95 mph fastball around the letters which produces one of the ugliest swings I’ve seen all evening. A 96 mph heater a few inches to the side of that leads to a swing that trumps even that. Dominance, plain and simple. Pineda decides to go high on Trumbo, but the man at the plate is not so easily fooled, and cracks it for a deep fly ball which is not only the longest hit pitch I see from the Bees until Koplove comes in, it probably leaves most other parks. Halman instead gets to it and that’s that.
The book is closed on Pineda, and I know that he won’t be brought out for the seventh, so I close my laptop, take in the scenery for a few minutes, and then make my way to the concession stands for a Rainier Dog and a large Pepsi, the cap of which I apparently cannot be trusted with. Perhaps MacGuyver did something terrible here back in the day. I’ll see other things worth noting, like Scott Patterson busting out an M in the midst of YMCA, and Jack Hannahan making the defensive play of the game as he flails for a liner in shallow center just to his left, which he snags before taking two more awkward steps and faceplanting amidst applause. But the evening, in my mind, is mostly just going to be about Pinea, and the half game I saw out of him. And what a half game, right?
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