TOWER GROVE — As much as health and staying in good shape throughout spring training has boosted St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Joel Pineiro on his strong start to this season, the righthander does have a silver bullet to explain his 3-0 record. He came into this season with a revived faith in his two-seam fastball, and, as teammate Kyle Lohse said Wednesday night, “he’s out there throwing it like it’s some kind of new toy.”

Behold, the power of a sinker.

Consider Pineiro a convert.

There is no new ground being covered here. Pitching coach Dave Duncan is a believer in the lower reaches of the strike zone, pitching to contact and letting the defense do the work so pitch counts stay like the pitches — low. The pitch that best fits that philosophy is a sinker. It can also be the great equalizer, and it may be the only pitch out there in baseball right now that an elite sinkerball pitcher can throw exclusively throughout his entire game (See: Brandon Webb, Derek Lowe and, at times, Aaron Cook). Pineiro had one before this season. He just didn’t throw it.

After his eight-inning win last night, Pineiro said he probably threw only six four-seam fastballs in his 91 pitches. More than two-thirds of his pitches were sinkers, mixing in a changeup and a slider. Last season, it was reverse. He’d throw maybe six, seven or eight sinkers in a game.

“He can locate it to both sides of the plate, he can throw it all day long and it’s just nasty,” said Lohse, who starts today against the New York Mets as the Cardinals go for a series sweep. “If you have a pitch like that, you don’t always have to use it, but you know you can to get somebody to hit it into the ground. It’s always there.”

Lohse knows from experience. A year ago, he was pledging the Fraternal Order of Sink. He too had a two-seam fastball with sink on it before coming to the Cardinals. He would use it sparingly. He would throw it low and away to lefthanded hitters. He didn’t trust it in other situation. Duncan worked him to use it more often, and to use it to more locations. He said recently his isn’t the type of sinker that you throw 60, 65 times in a game, but it’s an asset that augments his assortment. Pineiro, he said, is the type that can be thrown 60, 65 times. Pineiro said he’s OK if a hitter knows it’s coming.

As Duncan told him this spring: He’s going to throw it a lot this season.

That’s here today’s 10@10 starts:

1. As Rick Hummel mentioned in this morning’s paper, not one of the 24 outs Pineiro collected last night was a strikeout. Sixteen were groundouts. Pineiro’s last four full innings were all perfect innings, and nine of those 12 batters were retired on groundouts. A check of the Pitch Fx feature — new data that uses cameras at ballparks to triangulate type, speed and break of pitches — shows that maybe it needs to be re-calibrated a bit for Pineiro. All of his pitches in the fifth innings were described as “changeups”, but it’s like they were actually all 86-mph or 87-mph sinkers. In the eighth, he got Jose Reyes to groundout after throwing him an 89-mph sinker and a 83-mph changeup. After Reyes, Daniel Murphy bounced an 82-mph changeup to shortstop after seeing 87-mph and 88-mph sinkers. Pineiro has coaxed a team-best 34 groundouts in 19 innings this season. His groundout/flyout ratio is a robust 2.11, and according to ESPN stats he has gotten a groundball from nearly half of the batters he’s faced, 40 of 82.
2. Speaking of sinkers. Brad Thompson, sequestered in Memphis, building up his arm strength as a starter and holding steady for a callup, improved to 2-0 with the Triple-A affiliate. He threw five innings Wednesday and allowed one run on four hits. He struck out five, got seven groundouts and now has a 1.80 ERA. That inspires today’s poll.

   Who seizes the No. 5 starter spot as Chris Carpenter heals?

   • Mitchell Boggs (Saturday’s starter)
   • P.J. Walters (who had first crack)
   • Blake Hawksworth (back on the radar)
   • Clayton Mortensen (sporting 1.50 ERA in AAA)
   • Brad Thompson (middle man, see above)
   • Outside the Organization
   • Other

   View Results

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3. Happy Anniversary, Fernando Tatis. Back on April 23, 1999 — 10 years ago, if you can believe it — Tatis hit two grand slams in the same inning. Vin Scully, calling the game for the LA Dodgers, said he didn’t even need a record book to know he had just seen history after Tatis’ second shot of the third inning.  “I get goose pimples just thinking about it,” manager Tony La Russa said that night. “What have they? One hundred years of baseball? And this is the first time it’s ever been done? Wow.” Check out the box score here. And, fittingly, Tatis is in town with the Mets today.
4. He just isn’t expected to be a part of the Mets reorganized lineup. After Wednesday’s loss, Mets manager Jerry Manuel said he planned to make some significant chances to the lineup to goose a team that has lost eight of 12. Carlos Beltran and David Wright will swap spots in the lineup, with Beltran moving up to No. 3 and Wright sliding to No. 5. Beltran is hitting 9-for-19 (.474) the past five games. Gary Sheffield will start, and so will catcher Omir Santos. See, spring numbers do count. Santos hit two home runs off today’s Cardinals starter Kyle Lohse — in one spring training game.
5. Catcher Yadier Molina has a seven-game hitting streak coming into today’s game. He’s 11-for-26 in that span for an average of .423. A quick check of the matchups today shows that Jason LaRue is 2-for-13 with five strikeouts against Livan Hernandez. Hardly an excuse to get Molina an afternoon off.
6. The Cardinals have scored at least five runs in seven consecutive games, and a total of 48 runs in those seven games. “If it’s September and we’re still getting five, six (runs a game), then we’ll talk about it,” La Russa said. “It’s too early to give them a pat. We’re taking hungry at-bats. I don’t think we’ve taken a sleepy one all season.”
7. FARM REPORT: Sudden Memphis closer Jess Todd closed out Thompson’s start with a four-out save. The righthander now has three saves in his new role. He struck out three in 1 1/3 innings Wednesday, and his ERA dropped to 1.93. … Allen Craig went 2-for-3 in the 3-1 victory, and Shane Robinson’s average is .409. … High-A Palm Beach lost 6-1. Jermaine Curtis, leadoff hitt,er went 3-for-4 and is hitting .390 this season. Sam Freeman, the lefty reliever, pitched 2 2/3 scoreless innings and struck out two. … At Low-A Quad Cities, Casey Mulligan got his third save in a 4-2 victory. Mulligan has made five appearances this season and he’s struck out 11 against two walks. On Wednesday, the closer pitched one inning and struck out two. He’s got a 1.80 ERA. Center fielder Paul Cruz went 2-for-3 with a home run, and Blake Murphy — in his first start at QC — went 2-for-4 with two two-out RBIs.
8. I’m such an All-Star Game geek. Looking over the ballot that debuted yesterday took me back to 1994. See, Yankees outfielder Nick Swisher has reached base in his first 15 consecutive games as a Yankee, the second-most ever according to Elias Sports Bureau. And yet, he ain’t on the ballot. Three other Yankee outfielders are. Same thing in 1994. Paul O’Neill was hitting .405 in the middle of June that year and you couldn’t scribble in the dot beside his name — because he wasn’t on the All-Star ballot. A write-in campaign was launched from my Mizzou dorm room. Hundreds and hundreds of All-Star ballots were collected, written on, and then, in an 11th-hour dash to Busch Stadium from Columbia, taken to the ballot box on the final day of voting. Ah, foolish youth. Pointing and clicking is so much simpler.
9. Khalil Greene walked three times Tuesday and walked twice Wednesday, giving him five walks in five consecutive plate appearances. That’s as many or more walks in five plate appearances than he’s had in the following months: May 2008 (5), July 2008 (3), August 2007 (5), June 2007 (3) and July 2006 (3). In 61 PAs this season, Greene has eight walks. In 2007, his career year, he had 32 BB in 659 PA. He’s on pace to shatter his career high of 53, set in his rookie year.
10. Mentioned yesterday that in Chicago today is “Talk Like Shakespeare Day.” Ah, takes me back to my first days here at The Post-Dispatch when a letter to editor called me some “Shakespeare reject” covering hockey. Good times. (Come to think of it, though, perhaps they meant the pizza place … ?) A British web site offers up some hearty retorts to such vile stings. And it turns out the Bard knew a thing or two about the ballpark, with plenty of lines that could load up a game story:

“A hit, a very palpable hit!” (Hamlet). … “For this relief much thanks” (Hamlet). … “I will strike it out soundly” (King Henry V) … “You have scarce time to steal” (Henry VIII). … “O hateful error” (Julius Caesar). … “Fair is foul and foul is fair” (Macbeth). … And, of course, his call on Hank Aaron’s 715th home run: “Aaron, thou hast hit it.”

That’s from Titus Andronicus.

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