Following Todd Wellemeyer, whom we’ve cited in this space for his three-true-outcome pitching propensity, in the rotation, Joel Pineiro took the mound against the Mets and pitched to contact. A lot of it. Pineiro got the Mets to put the ball in play, but kept it in the park, facing 30 batters en route to the team’s 5-2 win Wednesday.

It was an intriguing performance, given that Pineiro had such little apparent control over the outcome of the game. He struck out none and walked only two. With two-seam fastballs and changeups (in 2009, Pineiro is throwing his changeup more than twice as often as he did in 2008), Pineiro induced 17 ground balls en route to a team defensive-efficiency ratio of .786. It was a seemingly amazing 93.3% balls put in play. So how unique a feat was it?

Well, courtesy of BRef, here is a list of Cardinal players since 1954 who faced at least as many batters as Pineiro and had an even higher percentage of balls put in play (of total batters faced):

If nothing else, it’s a fascinating list of stars (Morris, Tudor, Gibson) and also-rans (Lary Sorensen, Lynn McGlothen and Tom Poholsky). It’s amazing that three Cardinal starters have had pitched a game in which every batter put the ball in play. So Pineiro still has a ways to go to top the venerable Jim Kaat (who, incidentally, was a similarly nimble fielder at his position), who faced 36 Pirates back in 1980. But at least the Cardinals won Pineiro’s game: Kaat allowed two one-out singles in the 10th inning at Three Rivers Stadium, then induced a ground ball. But the Cardinals couldn’t turn a double play and the runner scored from third. Sometimes, a strikeout is indeed better than a ball in play, and it’s better to be good than lucky.

This entry was posted by Pip on Friday, April 24th, 2009 at 2:02 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. 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.