Harry Pavlidus, of BtB, has an excellent post up about whose stuff is better, Paulino or Nieve? He breaks it down in a myriad of different ways using both pitchers admittedly limited pitch/fx data. Interestingly enough, he comes out in favor of Nieve because of his ability to minimize mistakes. Paulino is given credit for his agressiveness and speed, but I recall those appearances coming mainly in relief, so I discount those remarks slightly.
That makes Nieve's decision to pitch in the WBC even more frustrating because of all the years we could use a young pitcher with some upside, it's this one. I am as excited about the nationalistic feveror which could potentially surrond this event as the next guy, but I don't see how Nieve could possibly consider jeopradizing his entire professional career for this event. It's probably stupid for me to even speculate about this, but I wonder if the Astros brass has made it clear to Nieve just how much he's risking by doing this? Not only is Nieve risking not making the team, but he's also putting a lot of unneeded strain on an arm that's still on the way back from Tommy John. It's just illogical.
The worst part about it, is that the Astros could potentially break camp with the lesser of our two young (in a relative sense) pitcher's because they won't get to look at one of them for three weeks. Although Paulino clearly has more upside in him because of his lack of experience, it'd be nice to at least have them competeting against each other for a shot in the rotation. But, as I've muttered to myself many times this off season: C'est la vie.
0 recs | 4 comments
I don't put much stock in his conclusion....
that Nieve is better than Paulino at minimizing mistakes. That conclusion was based on a handful of hits. While the overall sample size of pitches is small, the narrower subset of hits is tiny. The study is helpful in showing us the two pitchers’ stuff.
By the way, I almost forgot about Nieve’s deviated septum problem, which was the cause for moving him to the relief role last year. Apparently, Nieve had a breathing problem which kept him from getting adequate sleep and caused him to become fatigued if he pitched for too long.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/bb/5775740.html
I assume that Nieve had surgery to take care of that issue in the off-season. One can hope that also may improve his performance. The only other similar case I recall is relief pitcher Craig Hansen (Red Sox/Pirates) who was touted as a rebound candidate going into last season after he had his sleep problem addressed through the surgery. However, Hansen still had a bad year. I guess correcting a deviated septum didn’t improve his control. :)
clack - January 28, 2009
paulino
never really liked nieve so much…i have always liked paulino
EveryHoustonTeamRox! - January 28, 2009
felipe paulino
it ain’t the speed, it’s the motion
paulino’s numbers as a minor leaguer are simply lousy. he doesn’t have good control either, and having watched this guy, i simply do NOT get why anyone seriously thinks he can succeed in AAA, let alone the majors
lisa gray - January 28, 2009
I have to disagree with that.
Paulino’s main problem as a minor leaguer is that injuries have kept him from pitching a lot of innings. His numbers at AA in 07 are good: 112 IP, 3.62 ERA, 3.34 FIP, 22.5 percent K rate. Paulino’s K rate has been good throughout his minor league career and his BB rate isn’t that bad, either. I watched a fairly impressive performance by Paulino against the Braves at the end of 07, in which he pitched 6 innings, allowing only 2 hits and 0 runs; he looked impressive to me. The Astros don’t have many pitchers who can throw in the high 90’s like Pauliino, plus he has a hard slider…if you believe the article above, he throws his slider around 90.
clack - January 29, 2009
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