ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick is reporting that the Boston Red Sox are nearing an agreement with free agent pitcher and Seattle Mariners cast off Joel Pineiro. According to Crasnick the deal is for one year and four million dollars with incentives.

Pineiro has spent most of his career as a starter. While his ability to do so is great insurance for starting pitching depth, his role with the Red Sox next season is expected to be in the bullpen and possibly as their closer.

Pineiro’s career with the Mariners started with a fair amount of promise. But the 28 year old pitcher has struggled over the past few seasons watching his ERA balloon in 2006 to 6.36 in 165.2 innings.

It would appear that his struggles have primarily been as a result of his increasingly negative K/BB ratio and trouble with his control. Speculation is that inconsistencies in his release point have been the major culprit here.

Red Sox fans will get a good idea about their new pitching coach John Farrel’s ability to work with pitching mechanics right out of the gate.

While Pineiro has only faced 295 batters in his career as a reliever, he has had some success holding batters to a .205 batting average and a .610 OPS. It is with that hope that the Red Sox will most likely turn to Pineiro as one of their primary options to close games heading into Spring Training.

To that end the contract incentives are rumored to be based around numbers of games finished and could garner Pineiro an additional $2 million dollars and if he finishes 35+ games, establishing himself as a successful major league closer, he kicks in an option year for 2008.

Mariner fans have certainly soured on Pineiro. Upon news of his release by the club U.S.S. Mariner member DMZ had this to say:

“Well, here’s the basic story. Joel’s a guy, he makes his way up the minor league system, gets to Tacoma, and bam! He’s throwing faster, his stuff looks great — he makes that “if only he threw 2-3mph faster and had 10% better control” adjustment people tag every promising pitching prospect with. This new Joel makes the majors, he’s throwing a bunch of different pitches for strikes, he looks like he’s made a leap… and then nothing. He doesn’t progress at all, and then suddenly he’s fighting an arm injury, the velocity’s gone - he looks like the guy nobody cared about in AA, and that guy isn’t a major league-quality pitcher. It takes a while for that to be apparent to everyone, but eventually, it is.

You may draw what conclusions you will from that. He’s done.”

Here is a smattering of response on the Mariner blog since the news of Pineiro’s signing broke:

From CSG: “Pineiro’s become a drastically different pitcher in the last two seasons. He’s lost a ton of velocity, and I don’t think his breaking pitches are very effective as a result. He’s still got a decent change, but he’s lost his margin for error within the strike zone due to his loss of velocity, and tends to get hit really hard when he’s off (check out his line drive % from last year). His game is predicated on his control at this point, and he’s still not totally awful as long as he doesn’t walk anyone. If there’s one good trend to his pitching style, it’s that he’s started producing more ground balls the last two seasons, which is probably a good thing if he’s pitching in Fenway. I guess best case scenario would be he increases his GB% again next year, while reducing his walks. That would make him an average to slightly above average pitcher, but I still wouldn’t want him occupying an important role in the bullpen, due to his inability to strike anyone out, which doesn’t bode well for high-leverage situations. Maybe pitching out of the bullpen will help his velocity though, and pitchers do improve when moved from the rotation to the bullpen. The more I think about this deal, the less awful it sounds. I wouldn’t make it personally, but it’s not terrible if you have the money.”

From Spencer B: “As a young pitcher first up from AAA, he struck people out and was tough on RH. As his fastball crept from 94 down to about 88, he stopped striking people out, and folks started to tee off. There was some whisper of elbow problems about a year and a half ago, at which time he took a sharp turn for the worse. His command in the zone suuuuucks - lots of middle-in belt high hit-me fast balls. Good luck with him.
Good news is that he’s a nice guy, and the girls like him.”

From scotje: “Let’s just say, it would probably be prudent to add a “Tums & Alka-Seltzer” stand somewhere in Fenway.”

From scott47a: “I’d say by mid-season Red Sox Nation will have him driving through the Big Dig daily hoping a panel will fall.”

There is some precedence of late with starters converting to the closer role and finding success; Eric Gagne, Joe Nathan, Jason Isringhausen, Octavio Dotel, Keith Foulke, and to some degree Jonathan Papelbon. In fact, I believe Mariano Rivera was a starter before becoming the most dominant closer in baseball.

One thing is for sure, spring training keeps getting more interesting by the minute in Red Sox Nation.

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