Yesterday’s Cardinal lineup perhaps represented the worst-case scenario look of the team. Albert Pujols was out of the lineup for a scheduled day off, and while the headline concerns about his health have been subordinated by the team’s hot start, his absence was a reminder of how vulnerable the team is without him. On the pitching side of the ledger, Joel Pineiro’s subpar outing — a 49 FIGS — was perhaps a wakeup of sorts from the dreamy performances that the other starting pitchers have given so far.

Pineiro didn’t appear ready for primetime action, striking out none of the 21 batters he faced. But that noted, he probably didn’t pitch as badly as his line — 10 hits in 3 2/3 IP — would indicate. Had half of the nine balls in play (one of the hits was a home run) been converted to outs — like Eugenio Velez’s or Tim Lincecum’s bloopers– he would’ve pitched a full five innings and some of those runs may not have scored. Indeed, the team’s DER behind Pineiro was a season-low .550.

In lamenting Pineiro’s "unfair" ERA, Joe Strauss notes in his dispatch this morning that "Goofball scoring didn’t help Pineiro’s line," by which he means a questionable ruling on Brian Bocock’s groundball hit, which reminds us of a useful point about hits: pitchers have "little or no control" over balls in play. Bocock hit a ball into play; whether or not it was ruled a hit really has no bearing on Pineiro or his performance. Ditto the rest of those balls in play. Happily, his Fielding-Independent ERA remains the same regardless of the vagaries of the Official Scorer. While Pineiro’s ERA in the box score is a hideous 14.73, his FIP is "only" 6.44 (and his expected FIP is 6.10).

Lest one think that Pineiro got a raw deal from his defense and/or "luck," his FIP still doesn’t do him any favors: He’s worst among starters so far:

*Includes eight batters in relief

We’d be more inclined to see Pineiro worked into the rotation gradually, if for no other reason than to apply a consistent approach to the pitching staff. If Iron Cap was ousted from the rotation at the outset of the season because others were more deserving, Pineiro should’ve been given the back seat to the pitchers who’ve had success so far (to say nothing of Reyes’s work).

This entry was posted by Pip on Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 2:06 pm and is filed under analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.