Michael Pineda

28 years old

Bats/Throws: R/R

Height/Weight: 6’5”, 275 lbs

Position: Starting Pitcher

THE NUMBERS

 

LEVEL

W-L

ERA

WHIP

K/9

BB/9

IP

2011

MLB

9-10

3.74

1.10

9.1

3.2

171

2012

*DNP

 

 

 

 

 

 

2013

High-A, AA, AAA

2-1

3.32

1.11

9.1

3.1

40.2

2014

AAA

0-1

1.17

1.31

12.9

1.2

7.2

2014

MLB

5-5

1.89

0.83

7.0

8.4

76.1

2015

MLB

12-10

4.37

1.23

8.7

7.4

160.2

2015

AA, AAA

0-1

3.52

0.91

3.5

0.0

7.2

2016

MLB

6-12

4.82

1.35

10.6

3.9

175.2

Career

 

32-37

3.99

1.17

9.17

2.10

583.2

Prior to the 2011 season Pineda was listed as the 16th best prospect in baseball according to Baseball America and 24th at Baseball Prospectus.

Pineda missed the entire 2012 season after having surgery to repair his shoulder (anterior labral tear).

Missed a good deal of the 2013 as he was still working his way back from shoulder surgery.

THE SKILLS

Every year I write about a breakout pitcher with two of the last three seasons resulting in folks getting massive draft day bargains in Corey Kluber and Kyle Hendricks. I was this close, and I mean really close, to naming Pineda as that guy this season. Working against him was the fact that (A) he struck out 207 batters last season kinda already breaking out and (B) the fact that he’s been on breakout lists for years so it would be kinda cheating to call him a breakout option this season. Let’s break down the skills and see if we can figure out why Pineda can’t seem to put it all together.

This is one of the oddest Player Profile reports you will read all year.

A few obvious negatives.

1 – Pineda doesn’t have a third pitch he can trust. PITCHf/x has Pineda throwing his fastball 58 percent of the time (46 percent 2-seam, two percent 4-seam and 10 percent the cutter) and his slider 36 percent of the time. That’s 94 percent of his pitches with the change up coming in at just six percent. We will talk about his two elite level pitches in a moment, but it’s hard to consistently dominate as a starter with only two pitches.

2 – Second, the results really start to lag behind the third time he goes through the order. Here are his numbers as a starting pitcher.

 

AVG

OBP

SLG

1st Time Through Order

.244

.294

.409

2nd Time Through Order

.226

.267

.364

3rd Time Through Order

.265

.321

.458

*The 4th time through the order (9.2 innings): .357/.400/.571

3 – He gives up a whole lotta homers.

The last two seasons his HR/9 mark has been 1.18 and 1.38 as a result of a duo of very high HR/FB ratios (14.7 and 17.0 percent).

4 – The results never match the skills.

 

ERA

FIP

xFIP

SIERA

2011

3.74

3.42

3.53

3.35

2014

1.89

2.71

3.37

3.38

2015

4.37

3.34

2.95

3.09

2016

4.82

3.80

3.30

3.40

Career

3.99

3.42

3.28

3.31

The ERA is consistently much higher than his skills suggest, much.

Now the plusses.

Pineda has 595 strikeouts in 583.2 innings. That’s more than one an inning. That’s great. The 10.61 K/9 mark he posted last season was the 5th best in all of baseball.

Pineda has a 12.6 swinging strike rate for his career. The mark last season was 14.1 percent. That mark was the fourth best in baseball in 2016.

Pineda has a strong 2.10 BB/9 rate for his career. The mark was a career worst 2.72 last season, but that level is still a very stable mark given that the league average was 3.14 last season.

Pineda owns a 4.38 K/BB ratio for his career. Since 2011, amongst pitchers who have thrown 575 innings, Pineda’s mark is 10th in all of baseball.

Pineda owns a 43 percent ground ball rate for his career, a solid number. The number has been even better the last two seasons at 48.2 and 45.8 percent.

Those grounders leave Pineda with a GB/FB rate the last two seasons of 1.50. Amongst pitchers who have thrown at least 300-innings the past two seasons that’s the 27th best mark in baseball.

There’s more.

Pineda’s two pitch combo of fastball/slider is about as good as any starting pitcher in baseball. According to Pitch Values, based on Pitch Type Linear Weights, Pineda had the 7th most effective slider in baseball last season. It’s a flat out dominating pitch as his career slash line on it indicates (.196/.234/.333).

So, the question is, with all the good that Pineda brings to the party, why can’t he ever get the results we’re hoping for?

Let’s go back to the slider.

It’s a great pitch when an at-bat ends on the pitch, but the fact is that he only threw it for strikes last season 32.8 percent of the time. That was the 11th fewest pitches in the strike zone on a breaking pitch, by percentage, for an ERA qualifier in 2016. Fact is the slider was only useful when he was ahead in the count because it’s never really in the strike zone. The result is that batters just sit on the fastball knowing that if throws the slider early in the count that it won’t go over the plate. Here is how Pineda faired last season based on the count. Look at the movement based on count (listed by OPS).

 

OPS

PA

First Pitch

1.313

76

1-0

.970

33

2-0

1.267

15

3-0

3.500

11

0-1

7.45

60

1-1

1.017

71

2-1

1.074

27

3-1

1.679

28

0-2

.359

78

1-2

.449

132

2-2

.454

129

Full Count

.939

96

How insane are those numbers? When Pineda gets ahead in the count batters are in a tough spot. When he gets two strikes on them they are, to put it mildly, hosed as he can then drop in his slider on them which they have little chance to hit.

Even simpler.

When he falls behind batters have a .827 OPS.
The league average on 1-0 counts forward in 2016 was .975, so Pineda was appreciably better.

When he gets ahead 0-1 that OPS is just .663.
The league average in 2016 when the pitcher was ahead 0-1 was .834, so Pineda was appreciably better.

Pretty simple really.

PLAYING TIME

Pineda will obviously take the ball every five games for the Yankees.  

AVERAGE DRAFT POSITION DATA

As of this writing, here is Pineda’s ADP data.

 

Overall

Position Rank

NFBC

212.1

57th

MDA

205.7

54th

Fantasy Alarm Player Rankings

CONCLUSION

Pineda has plus velocity leading to a lot of strikeouts. He has one of the best sliders in baseball. He gets a good deal of grounders, and doesn’t walk many. Though his HR/FB mark has been elevated the last two years the odds are very good that the number of the last two seasons will regress. It’s all there for Pineda to be a fantasy monster. Alas, it just hasn’t happened. Some guys always exceed expectations. It seems like Pineda is one of the rare arms that always fails to meet expectations. He should be better than he is, and that’s the problem. He just isn’t.

10-Team Mixed: The strikeouts are legit. However, the ERA rarely cooperates, and he’s never been able to reach 180-innings in a season either. Toss in the ineffectiveness in the final results and he’s pretty much the last SP on a staff in this format.

12-Team Mixed: He’s a 5/6 starting pitcher in this setup. He’s likely not to have much “push” in the fantasy game, there are certainly folks that will never draft him after being burned, so it’s unlikely he will be taken well ahead of his ADP which does offer enough room with him to hope the return on your investment finally comes.

15-Team Mixed: The strikeouts are legit. The stuff is impressive. Still lacks that third pitch, is homer prone... oh well, you know the story by now.

AL-Only League: If the cost is at the ADP level you can invest, though there is certain ERA risk, as well as health concerns, that should give you pause before you aggressively bid on his services.

 

Ray Flowers can be heard Monday/Tuesday and Thursday/Friday, 8 PM EDT, Wednesday 7 PM EDT on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio (Sirius 210, XM 87). You can also hear Ray Sunday nights at 9 PM EDT PM on the channel talking fantasy sports. Follow Ray’s work at Fantasy Alarm and on Twitter (@baseballguys).