Joel Pineiro is hit hard in Angels’ 9-5 loss
Reporting from St. Louis -- It was as if he never left.
Joel Pineiro withered in his final two starts at Busch Stadium with the St. Louis Cardinals last season, failing to make it past the fifth inning in a pair of losses.
The Dodgers were particularly hard on him in their National League division series-clinching victory, rendering a record-setting crowd mute when they battered the sinkerball specialist for four early runs.
Pineiro was more of a crowd-pleaser in his return here Friday, albeit in a visitor’s uniform. He served up a grand slam to pitcher Brad Penny and surrendered all of the Cardinals’ runs in the first three innings of their 9-5 victory over the Angels.
The right-hander called it “an embarrassing start,” especially considering it followed a stretch in which he had not given up a run in his previous two outings. That made his pitching line Friday — nine hits and nine runs allowed in only three innings, his shortest start in nearly four years — all the more unsightly.
“It doesn’t make sense,” said Pineiro, whose 18-inning scoreless streak ended when Colby Rasmus whacked a two-run triple to right-center field in the first inning. “It’s like one doesn’t go with the other.”
The Cardinals added two runs in the second before things fully unraveled for Pineiro an inning later. With runners on second and third and two out, Angels Manager Mike Scioscia elected to intentionally walk Skip Schumaker so that Pineiro could face the .118-hitting Penny.
Pineiro said he figured Penny would be swinging with the bases loaded, so he tried to throw him a slider down and away on his first pitch. The slider stayed over the plate, and Penny blasted it over the left-field wall for the first grand slam of his career.
“I knew what I wanted to do,” Pineiro said, “but I didn’t get it there.”
Felipe Lopez followed with a solo homer two pitches later to increase the Cardinals’ lead to 9-4, and Pineiro (3-5) was done after the inning ended. So was Penny, who departed because of a strained back muscle after throwing a couple of warmup pitches before the top of the fourth.
Pineiro’s clunker left the Angels to contemplate how he could be so alternately good and bad over his last eight starts. In five of the starts he has averaged seven innings and compiled an earned-run average of 0.76; in the other three he has averaged four innings and run up a 17.52 ERA.
In Pineiro’s latest collapse, Scioscia said, he repeatedly pitched behind in the count and failed to command his secondary pitches.
“When he’s not going to be on, you have to try to battle and get an out any way you can and maybe you can get him through five [innings] to keep us in the game,” Angels catcher Mike Napoli said. “We had a rough time trying to do that tonight.”
Napoli was among a host of Angels who tried to pick up their struggling teammate. Napoli hit a two-run homer and a double, giving him a .667 slugging percentage since April 29 that ranks seventh in the American League among hitters with at least 50 at-bats in that span.
Relievers Trevor Bell, Scot Shields and Jason Bulger combined to pitch five scoreless innings and shortstop Erick Aybar made two spectacular defensive plays, including a third-inning gem in which he ranged into shallow left field to glove Albert Pujols’ grounder before throwing him out at first base.
None of it really mattered on a night when Pineiro faltered so badly.
“The game plan was there, the attack was there,” Pineiro said. “I just didn’t hit my spots when I needed to and they hit me around.”
Clicking on Green Links will take you to a third-party e-commerce site. These sites are not operated by the Los Angeles Times. The Times Editorial staff is not involved in any way with Green Links or with these third-party sites.
Go beyond the scoreboard
Get the latest on L.A.'s teams in the daily Sports Report newsletter.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
