Tipping Pitches: Pineda and Cotton Shine on Monday

Two arms who got a lot of attention this draft season made their second starts of the season and dominated the opposition. Michael Pineda and Jharel Cotton were bouncing back from opening week duds after both guys had bad second innings that eventually cut short their outings, but neither were exactly pummeled. They rebounded nicely in their Monday afternoon outings. Here are my thoughts on the two starts.

Michael Pineda – 7.7 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 0 BB, 11 K, 1 HR, 93 pit, 67 strikes, 18 swinging strikes v. TB

Few things are more “Michael Pineda” than following up a 3.7 IP/4 ER bomb with 7.7 nearly perfect innings (Evan Longoria’s double broke up the perfecto with two outs in the seventh). Hell, his first start was also the most “Michael Pineda” ever (4 ER in fewer than 4 IP yet still 6 K, 0 BB) so he’s been everything you’d expect thus far. The fastball velocity was up a tick and had the Rays tied up. They beat the piss out of it in his debut with a 1.417 OPS in 12 PA, the bulk of which came against lefties (9 of 12 PA). Yesterday they were 0-for-11 with lefties again accounting for nine of the plate appearances.

He used the changeup 14% of the time along with 45% fastballs and 41% sliders which some believe helped fueled the success, but I’m not so sure that’s the case. He used the changeup 10%+ of time in eight starts last year and had six of top 12 Game Scores, but also two of his three worst so it’s not as simple as just using it more often. That’s akin to when we see the stats about a football team winning 85% of their games when they run the ball 25+ times and thinking that just putting in 25 run plays will yield a win. The changeup ended just one plate appearance all day – Logan Morrison’s home run.

When the fastball is on, Pineda is on. I didn’t even get into the slider because it was elite in both starts and is rarely the cause of his disaster starts. It. Is. All. About. The. Fastball. And his simply isn’t that good very often. It’s got nice velocity (93-96 mph), but it’s pretty straight and he doesn’t command it well. Until something drastically changes with his ability to get outs via the fastball, he’s the same infuriating arm we’ve grown accustomed to the last few years. If you can’t handle the volatility of Pineda, you should probably just trade him because trying to time his good starts (how many of you benched him this week?) is more maddening than just taking the bad with the good. The start on Monday isn’t the start of something big, Charlie Brown. Lucy still isn’t letting you kick that football. Hold. Or Sell if you’re expecting something different than what we’ve seen.

Jharel Cotton – 7 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 3 BB, 6 K, 98 pit, 61 strikes, 15 swinging strikes at KC

Cotton wins by getting and staying ahead of the batters. Of course, a lot of pitchers have success when they are out front early, but Pineda, for example, doesn’t have a strong correlation between his first pitch strike rate (FPS) and success. In his five starts last year, Cotton had lower than 65% FPS rate just once (58% at KC) and they managed three runs on seven hits (only one earned). He had a career-low 55% FPS rate in his season debut, falling behind five of the first 10 batters he faced. On Monday, he had a 64% FPS rate and never allowed more than a single baserunner in any of his seven innings.

His high-80s cutter was a big difference maker, particularly against lefties. He doubled his usage from game one to 26% and lefties got 13 of the 30 he threw. Part of the difference is just the fact that the Angels only had Kole Calhoun and switch-hitting Danny Espinosa coming from the left side against Cotton while the Royals lineup has five such hitters, including three of their top four.

Fastballs and cutters in the low-to-mid 90s paired with that disgusting high-80s changeup would be tough enough, but throw in some wicked afternoon shadows and that’s how you get a 1-for-14 day for lefties against Cotton. Our friends at the Pitcher List (follow them!) highlighted one such filthy change at prime shadow time:

I was undeterred by Cotton’s debut and I’m of course heartened by the dominant performance his second time out. I expect ups and downs in his first full season as a major leaguer, with the highs being enough to mitigate the damage of the lows and his home ballpark raising the floor on some of his off days. Buy.





Paul is the Editor of Rotographs and Content Director for OOTP Perfect Team. Follow Paul on Twitter @sporer and on Twitch at sporer.

8 Comments
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Paul
6 years ago

7.7 innings? Is that the way we are going to do it now? Come on. Why reinvent the wheel? 7 and 2/3 works for me.

Choos on first
6 years ago
Reply to  Paul

I gotta agree, 3.7 and 7.7 IP doesn’t register properly in my brain as I’m used to seeing 3.2 and 7.2 normally. I’m not understanding the need to be contrarian here.

Werthlessmember
6 years ago
Reply to  Paul Sporer

It’s contrarian to be accurate, in that manner, about innings pitched. 🙂

Paul
6 years ago
Reply to  Paul Sporer

Completely agree Paul, that’s why I added my helpful comment. I wish I could give you comment 2/3 of a thumbs up.

Rotoholicmember
6 years ago
Reply to  Choos on first

When you work with spreadsheets a lot and have to run endless Ctrl+H to replace .1 and .2 in the IP column, it’s a nice change to see the proper decimal used.

cs3member
6 years ago
Reply to  Rotoholic

A bit strange to copy this article into a spreadsheet.