I was gonna do a post on this

that this was the best start of any cardinal pitcher all season?

92 pitch, 3 hit, complete game shut out, including a four pitch inning. we really needed that, joel. could be a momentum changer because tomorrow it’s like we’re trading for a cy young type pitcher and a center fielder that can carry a team when he’s hot, but hasn’t been yet this year

and if joel had that sinker and could spot it every time out, he would easily be a front of the rotation kind of guy. i bet he has a career year and signs some big contract with an al east team

gotta give it up to lilly, too. that slow ass curve was ridiculously nasty

looks like the vertical and horizontal movement on Joel’s sinker isn’t as much as you see with Webb/Lowe, but then I suppose we are talking about the two best sinkerballers in the game. IMO the key to Pinata’s continued success is continuing to limit the walks – he WILL give up hits with the stuff he’s got, and teams will start to lay off if he continues throwing a good 50%+ of his pitches out of the zone, but if he can restrict the number of baserunners he’ll hopefully only get tagged for occasional runs, and the HR that will surely eventually come will hurt him less.

“he’s not the same pitcher we’ve seen in the past”

As always, I’m am fascinated with pitch f/x and am really going to be interested in hit f/x when it comes out, just to see if we can improve the defensive saber stats to the point where they can be considered as accurate as the pitching and hitting stats we’re using.

I would also be interested in seeing what’s going on with his release points. If you could, could you see what the difference is from, say, last August, when Piniero couldn’t throw a pitch that didn’t get hammered somewhere. That would go a long way towards convincing me that starts like this are repeatable or if we’re seeing a great start that’s going to peter out in mid-July.

If the data shows that he’s changed his gameplan (keeping the ball down in the zone, inducing groundballs, decreasing walk-rate vs. his power pitcher fastball/big curve days in Seattle) that would be a huge plus.

i admire joel performance, but i think this article mostly puts me more in awe of webb and lowe.