Pineiro Continues To Impress

(Photo Credit: Yardbarker.com)

I’m on record as not being a fan of the Joel Pineiro signing. In fact, in my very first post here at Halo Hangout, I called Pineiro the “poster boy” for regression in 2010. So far, that hasn’t been the case. So far.

Pineiro was solid against Monday night, shutting out the Tigers over 7.1 innings, while striking out four and walking none. He got through the Tigers lineup last night pretty much the same way he pitched while with St. Louis last year, striking out few, walking even fewer, and giving up hits but getting out of trouble. It’s always dangerous to allow nine runners to reach base through a little over 7 innings, but Pineiro worked around it last night, and has pretty much done that all season, as evidenced by his sparkling 1.77 ERA.

So does all this mean that I’m reversing where I stand on Pineiro? Well… not quite. Thus far it’s only been three games, which is almost pointless to base anything off of. On top of that, his numbers this far have been an improvement over what he did last year, which would truly be shocking to me. I’ll go into more detail on Pineiro and my expectations for him in an upcoming installment of my Player Previews, but for now I will just say that we’d better enjoy this ride while he’s holding it all together. He should certainly be commended for the way he’s performed this season, and so far we haven’t even seen a sign of the wheels starting to come off.

So far.

(Nate Proctor is the lead writer for Halo Hangout.  You can stay up to date on all of Nate’s work by following him on Twitter, Facebook, or by way of the Halo Hangout RSS feed.)