What’s Wrong with Yankees Pitcher Michael Pineda?

At this time last season Michael Pineda was off to the best start of his young career, and few even coined him to be a dark horse to win the 2015 American League Cy Young Award.

However, ‘Big Mike’ fell apart midway through the season, and has since failed to regain his form. Currently at 1-3 with a 6.33 ERA in five starts, Pineda is set to open up a pivotal three-game series at home against Rick Porcello and the Boston Red Sox tonight, but first we take a look at whats wrong with the 27-year old right hander.

According to Michael Salfino of The Wall Street Journal, Pineda’s decline is in large part due to an uncharacteristic lack of command and his inability to battle back when behind in the count.

Now given his history of shoulder problems and injuries in his throwing arm, it’s with a big sigh of relief that we see Pineda’s fastball velocity (92.8 mph) sitting just as high as it was last season, according to FanGraphs.

But, as Salfino noted, MLB stat provider Inside Edge reveals the real problem behind Pineda’s struggles.:

"“Pineda’s fastball command is way down (61% strikes, compared with the MLB average of 65%). Further evidence of fat pitches is that his well-hit rate has soared to 17.4%, a big jump from his 12% last year and well above the MLB average of 13.4%. His efficiency has cratered, with 40% of batters seeing at least five pitches per at-bat, up from 33% last year. And he’s getting killed when he falls behind, generating outs just 42% of the time on 2-0, 2-1 or three-ball counts. Last year, 63% of those at-bats ended in outs.”"

According to BrooksBaseball.net, the only pitch Michael Pineda is finding success with when behind in the count is his cutter. He converts on his cutter 67% of the time against left-handed hitters and 71% of the time against the right-handed hitters. His slider and changeup are almost non-existent when behind in the count:

Now of course it’s still early enough in the season for Pineda to turn his misfortunes around, but he needs to do so in a hurry. Following their wasted gem by Masahiro Tanaka on Thursday night in Baltimore, the Yankees have fallen to 9-17 and 7.0 games back of the division leading Boston Red Sox.

From a personal standpoint, 2017 marks his final season of arbitration eligibility before becoming an unrestricted free-agent for the first time in his young career. If Pineda continues to struggle and drive his stock downward, he might just find himself out of a pinstripe uniform come 2018.