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On game theory and Michael Pineda’s fastball

Mariano Rivera’s cutter. Kenley Jansen’s cutter. Zach Britton’s sinker.

There are pitches in baseball that are just so lethal that it doesn’t matter if the hitter knows it’s coming. The hurler that possesses these pitches will throw the pitch nine out of every ten times without consequences. Well, there are consequences, but those consequences are elite effectiveness and run prevention.

These pitchers are extremely lucky to not have to worry about pitch sequencing, and these types of pitches are extraordinarily rare. They’re so rare, in fact, that we could probably count them on one hand, per generation.

Now what does this have to do with the topic of this article? Well, nothing, really, other than the fact that Michael Pineda doesn’t own one of these rare pitches. In fact, it may not even literally be possible to be a starting pitcher and throw a pitch 90% of the time, while still enjoying success. The pitchers mentioned above are undeniably elite, but they also enjoy the benefit of not having to face the same batter twice in the same outing. And don’t forget that Zach Britton flopped as a starting pitcher in the Major Leagues.

Anyways, if a pitcher isn’t in possession of one of these ’80 scale’ pitches, then he has to worry about the game theory behind pitch sequencing. The three oft-recited components that make up an effective pitch are velocity, movement, and location. However, an equally or more important factor in this whole equation is throwing a type of pitch that the hitter isn’t expecting.

Do you know how some movies open with a scene during the climax of the movie before cutting to the opening scene? Well, I arranged this article like that…except that it’s a lot less cool here, and it was mostly unintentional.

By the traditional metrics, such as ERA, Michael Pineda has struggled this season. He hasn’t gone deeper than six innings in any start, he hasn’t kept runs off of the board, and he’s been extremely homer-prone. When a player struggles, especially one that you may have expected to perform well, the first step is to go look at his sabermetric components and decide if it’s due to bad process or bad luck. And as the educated and Yankee-diehard reader that you are, you’re probably already aware that Pineda is a sabermetric darling that grades out extremely well through this lens. So far in 2016, he’s boasted exceptional strikeout (22.7 K%) and walk rates (6.0 BB%) while suffering unlucky marks of BABIP (.357) and home runs allowed (20.5 HR/FB%). Naturally, we’d see this, chalk his early-season struggles up to bad luck, and call it a day….except that this is a script we’ve already seen before. All of those statements could’ve been copy-and-pasted to describe how Pineda’s 2015 season went. And at some point, the sample size becomes large enough where, as the saying goes, “you make your own luck”.

So the real question is, why has Michael Pineda become so darn hittable? Well, the homer problem, to an extent, is probably truly bad luck. Pineda has faced high-powered offenses such as Houston, Toronto, and Boston, in four of his first six starts this year. Pineda will likely always allow a higher proportion of gopherballs than the normal pitcher, but his HR/FB% should also come way down from its lofty rate of 20.5%.

A closer look into Pineda’s results by pitch type might answer more of our question. As in agreement with the previous conclusion, all of Pineda’s pitches have been homer-prone. However, take away the homers and Pineda’s secondary pitches look like quality offerings. The real problem lies with Pineda’s fastball. Hitters are absolutely teeing off, hitting a somewhat-unbelievable .400/.458/.754 against it this season. While it’s important to note that it’s common for a pitcher’s fastball to have the worst results out of all of his pitch types, a 1.212 OPS is still ludicrous. Hitters even feasted on Pineda’s fastball last season, slashing .326/.342/.519 as well. If this were, for example, results for a pitcher’s splitter that he threw about 5% of the time, then the simple solution would be to ditch that pitch. However, this is Michael Pineda’s fastball that we’re talking about, and he can’t just ditch his fastball. What about lowering the usage of the fastball? Well, that’s a fine solution for other pitchers, but Pineda already throws his slider a whopping 34.8% of the time, which among qualified pitchers, leads the AL and trails only Kenta Maeda for the Major League crown in slider usage.

The other problem with limiting Pineda’s fastball is that, as an isolated pitch, it’s actually pretty good. It has above-average velocity, averaging 92.9 mph and routinely touching 95 mph. It’s also unique enough in its movement that Brooks Baseball classifies it as a cutter.

So the only solution remaining is to mix up the pitch sequencing. Whether it’s the catcher’s fault for calling the heater during predictable counts, or Pineda’s fault for shaking to the fastball during those counts, something has to be changed in the timing of his fastball usage. Throwing offspeed pitches in hitters’ counts will probably lead to more walks, but with Pineda’s sterling record of limiting walks, that shouldn’t be an issue, especially if it comes with the tradeoff of fewer longballs allowed. Pineda may currently be running into the Phil Hughes problem of throwing too many strikes. In fact, since the beginning of last season, Pineda’s 1.39 BB/9 ranks third in the Majors behind just Bartolo Colon and the aforementioned Phil Hughes, among pitchers with a minimum 150 innings pitched over that span. Pineda’s stuff is significantly better than those two, but the results don’t bear that out.

Pineda’s fastball is too good for the results to be this bad. However, the results have been too bad for Pineda not to make an adjustment, and that has to change.

Photo: Adam Hunger / USA Today Sports

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