The Difference Between Cingrani and Pineda
Tony Cingrani has one pitch, or at least that’s how our conversation started. Michael Pineda has two, or at least that’s why I’ve been skeptical of him. Maybe thinking about these two pitchers can help us understand the relative importance of each type of pitch a little better.
First, it seems like Cingrani actually has two pitches now. His slider has an 18.2% whiff rate, so all the work he’s done on the pitch is finally coming through. With a couple inches of drop, it’s both his tightest pitch and also the one that drops the most. The new plane has given him a new weapon, and he’s throwing the pitch almost three times as often now.
But if we like starting pitchers with three pitches — they have to get hitters of both hands out, and get through the lineup three times — Cingrani seems to fail the test. His change-up gets six percent whiffs this year, which is terrible even if it’s double the number he got last year. The average change gets 15% whiffs.
Over in New York, the finally healthy Michael Pineda is getting a 22% whiff rate on his sliders to continue a short career full of good work with the pitch. If that number were to hold up all year under a starter’s workload, Pineda’s slider would rank in the top ten, somewhere around the slide-pieces thrown by Clayton Kershaw and Matt Garza.
But Pineda’s never had a good change-up. At least, it wasn’t good in Seattle, when it got a 5% whiff rate. It’s getting whiffs this year, but the sample is tiny… the good news is this: it’s a firm change-up (~5mph difference between the change and the fastball), that got 50% grounders in Seattle. If he can use the pitch for grounders from lefties, he might be okay. The bad news is that the pitch hasn’t gotten grounders much this year so far, but we return to the small sample on the pitch.
In some ways, Cingrani’s change-up is in the same place as Pineda’s. Both are firm change-ups that are best used for grounders, both have inconsistent histories. Neither is a plus pitch, but both pitchers have good breakers… and good fastballs.
Cingrani’s fastball is top three in baseball despite only sitting between 91 and 92. Perhaps it’s that deception, or great command, but he had the second-best whiff rate on his fastball among qualified starters. When Michael Pineda was sitting 94, his fastball came close to Cingrani’s in whiff rate (9.3% to Cingrani’s 11%). But now Pineda is sitting 92 and his fastball can’t really compare in terms of whiffs, and the Yankee has always been a fly ball guy.
Eventually we’ll be able to make a number sentence out of something that currently reads like this: Pineda FB < << Cingrani FB, Pineda SL >> Cingrani SL, Pineda CH = Cingrani CH. That can all be done with Z-scores, no problem. The trick is that each pitch is not worth the same amount. If by sheer quantity alone — the fastball is thrown more than the rest of the pitches in baseball combined — the fastball is most important pitch. This number sentence would favor Cingrani by some amount because he owns the fastball portion, in other words.
But we all knew that we wanted Cingrani over Pineda, didn’t we? The important news might be that we should be watching the ground-ball rates on their change-ups. Neither has the ten mph difference you look for in whiffy change-ups, so they should be throwing firmer changes and looking for grounders. And if they can get those grounders, these two pitchers might actually have complete arsenals.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
I’m aware this is all a small sample size. But the majority of your claim prefering Cingrani over Pineda rests on the fastball
But you claim that Pineda got a near Cingrani whiff percentage with his four seamer when he threw 94, but not when he threw 92. But so far this season, he’s been rocking a 9.62% whiff rate. That’s your one claim thats not statistically backed up and it really hurts the Cingrani FB>>>Pineda FB argument
It’s at least a >>. Over their careers, Cingrani a 11.6% whiff rate and Pineda a 10.6. And now Pineda down two MPH and the sample on the FBs for these two guys is much larger than their other pitches. Pineda has throw 7 or 17 change-ups according to the site you use. He’s thrown 104 FBs this year (9.6% whiffs).
Thats another thing- Pineda’s been throwing an average of 93.26, and he was averaging 93.8 against the Blue Jays.
I had the difference right, but the numbers wrong. He used to sit 95+, now he’s 93.3 this year by Brooks.
But there’s a real difference between a righty sitting 92 and a righty sitting 93, when the league average is 91.4; And then there’s the fact that Pineda’s whiff rate hasn’t declined by much at all (well within the margin of error, considering that he’s thrown just 104 fastballs, and is still comfortably above the league average.
Is Pineda on an innings limit like Cingrani?
Does handedness factor into the quality ratings in each pitch (e.g. is a 91 lefty fastball > a 93 righty fastball) or normalized?
Also Pineda needs to pine tar less obviously 🙂
I think you’re close Eno, but I think the difference has to do with the handedness of each pitcher, the ratio of LHBs vs. RHBs, and the platoon split for the slider.
So if you’re going to look at the shiny star for fastball/slider, two-pitch pitchers, you look at Justin Masterson, a RHP. And like you expect, he’s got a heavy platoon split — he is unhittable by RHBs and pretty darn hittable by LHBs. If you look at total batters faced, last season he faced 494 LHBs to 309 RHBs for a “Platoon Ratio” of 1.59. Likewise if you look at LHP with big slider usage, Francisco Liriano faced 528 RHBs to 138 LHBs for a PR of 3.83. I had run the numbers across the league, but I’d guess this is a fairly accurate generalization for the Platoon Ratios all starting pitchers face, or at least those with good sliders — LHPs face proportionally more RHBs than RHPs face LHBs.
What this means is that all things equal, two starting pitchers with a FB/SL arsenal of opposite handedness, the RHP will have better overall numbers because he’s facing a lower proportion of batters he’s not equipped to get out. To use Liriano and Masterson’s batters face that proportion is nearly double for LHPs vs. RHPs.
So with that, I’d say Pineda combo is likely the better of the two, as in the worst case, he’s got a profile like Masterson which ain’t half bad. If Cingrani can’t develop a change, he’s going to continue to have spotty luck.
I’ll take Cingrani’s fastball, though, and that’s 58% of the pitches in baseball. This is why I need to do linear regression to find out the weights.
You also have to account for the fact that Pineda’s velocity should be expected to improve as he gets further away from the surgery; it took Anibal a while to get his stuff back, too.
Also, his changeup is looking nice right now. It’s not a coincidence that he’s getting whiffs on it. It’s a legitimate improvement (like you would expect from a 25 year old in comparison to when he was 22). I expect some regression, it’s not gonna get more whiffs than his slider, but I don’t think he should be expected to go back to 5%, either.
I think a better equation would be Pineda FB<>Cingrani SL, Pineda CH>Cingrani CH.
And then there’s the fact that Pineda has a well above average walk rate, while Cingrani has a below average walk rate, leading to a .50 career difference in K/BB, which more than follows from their MiLB numbers.
I might prefer Cingrani this season, just because Pineda is going to be on an innings limit and will likely have some stamina issues due to his time off, but give me a healthy Pineda going forward every time.
Pitchers generally lose velocity. If Pineda gains a tick like Anibal, he still won’t be the guy he was in Seattle, which was a two-pitch pitcher still. Given how long he’s been trying to develop a change, and the fact that the shape of his change hasn’t … changed, and the fact that he’s thrown fewer than 20 changes, I’m going with small sample size on the change this year.
He really hasn’t been trying to develop a change for that long, though. This is only his second year in the MLB.
And while pitchers generally lose velocity as they age, I think that’s offset in this case by the fact that pitchers generally gain velocity as they move further away from shoulder injuries. He’s still running it up to 97, and I think he’ll be able to maintain more of that as he begins to get used to pitching again.
These were Pineda’s first 2 MLB starts in over 2 years. I don’t think he’s shown all he can do yet, stuff-wise, and that’s pretty scary.
I guarantee you he’s been hearing about and trying to develop a change up since the first day he was in a minor league system. In the linked Cingrani interview, he admitted he’d been hearing about his secondary pitches the entire time he was in the minor leagues.
I doubt it started the first day in the minors. Lots of teams don’t start messing around with your pitches until the upper levels.
Also, there were more than the usual “learned a new pitch!/best shape of his life!” rumblings about Pineda’s changeup back in 2012. It was looking a lot better, which was part of why the injury was so upsetting. This is a continuation of the improvement we never got hard data on, not something completely out of the blue.
I’m not sure I’m buying the premise that Pineda is a risk because he’s a two-pitch pitcher. I don’t see much vulnerability in Pineda from lefties. In his (brief) career, lefties have hit .236/.293/.365 off Pineda, with fewer HRs in more PAs than righties. (To put that in perspective, lefties have hit .283/.361/.417 off of Masterson.) I also saw a 2012 Baseball Analytics piece that rated his slider as being more effective against lefties than righties, which gibes with commentary about Pineda’s slider’s effectiveness against opposite handed hitters. Pineda seems to be the rare pitcher who can start effectively, now, with two pitches. And if he develops his change up, which he used to very good effect in his last start against lefty-heavy Boston, he could be a monster.
The risk in Pineda really is stamina and health, right? Coming off shoulder surgery…a slider/FB pitcher…
Cingrani looking good Eno!