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Baltimore Orioles rumors: Joel Pineiro is the latest St. Louis Cardinals refugee to beat Kyle Lohse to employment

Joel Pineiro, one of the purest expressions of Dave Duncan-ism to ever pitch to contact, has signed a minor league deal with the Baltimore Orioles.

Otto Greule Jr

One of the perennial questions surrounding players who have big seasons that are immediately credited to a change in approach is just how long those gains last. Joel Pineiro—Dave Duncan's most doctrinaire success story for the St. Louis Cardinals after a 2009 season in which he stopped striking anybody out and led baseball in walk rate—is a good case-study. He signed with the Orioles on a minor-league contract Monday, without even an invitation to major league camp.

As it turns out, Pineiro's devout Duncanism only lasted a season-and-a-half. After his big 2009 his strikeout and walk rates jumped up again in 2010, but he was still effective; in 2011 his strikeout rate fell off again, but so did his command.

Year Age Tm Lg W L ERA GS IP H R ER HR BB SO ERA+ HR/9 BB/9 SO/9 SO/BB
2006 27 SEA AL 8 13 6.36 25 165.2 209 123 117 23 64 87 70 1.2 3.5 4.7 1.36
2007 28 TOT MLB 7 5 4.33 11 97.2 110 49 47 14 26 60 105 1.3 2.4 5.5 2.31
2008 29 STL NL 7 7 5.15 25 148.2 180 89 85 22 35 81 82 1.3 2.1 4.9 2.31
2009 30 STL NL 15 12 3.49 32 214.0 218 94 83 11 27 105 117 0.5 1.1 4.4 3.89
2010 31 LAA AL 10 7 3.84 23 152.1 155 66 65 15 34 92 104 0.9 2.0 5.4 2.71
2011 32 LAA AL 7 7 5.13 24 145.2 182 90 83 16 38 62 73 1.0 2.3 3.8 1.63

The pessimistic or skeptical way to deal with that is obvious; his "new approach" lasted about a year before he fell apart again. But if you're an optimist, or you're ghost-writing Dave Duncan's memoirs, there's another way to put it: If it weren't for Dave Duncan, Joel Pineiro's 2011 season probably would have happened in 2008. After falling out of the rotation in 2007 following multiple ineffective seasons, Pineiro pushed his inevitable decline back three years by taking the words "pitch to contact" literally.

Eventually everybody's going to fall back to the baseline. Players who get new glasses or open up their swings or develop a cutter aren't immune to that, but they have bought themselves some time.