Joel Pineiro was in the middle of an electrifying performance when, all of a sudden, there was no electricity.
For once, however, the problem was not with Pineiro but with the SoDo electrical grid. A truck hit a power pole about 1½ miles south of the stadium, temporarily knocking out the Safeco Field lights with the Texas Rangers facing the Mariners.
The Mariners were batting at the time and holding a 1-0 lead. Pineiro had been blowing fastballs by the Rangers at 95mph, then freezing them with 83-mph changeups. He was at the top of his game, but would he be allowed to continue?
"It would be a shame if he didn't get a chance to keep going," one American League scout said, "because this is the best he's thrown all year."
The electrical problems -- technically a voltage drop and not a complete outage -- were cleared up and the game resumed after a 34-minute delay. And it turned out Pineiro hadn't lost a thing. He retired the first 14 batters he faced after the lights went low, then finished with a four-hitter and a 3-1 win.
"We figured we could wait 45 minutes, anyway," manager Bob Melvin said. "But after that, it becomes a tougher call."
Pineiro kept from cooling down by throwing in the batting cages under the stadium. He didn't throw hard, he just threw enough to keep his arm loose.
After a five-decision losing streak and no wins since July, this was not the kind of distraction Pineiro needed.
"I was saying to myself, `This can't be happening,'" Pineiro said. "But the big thing was, once the game did start up again, I was able to stay focused."
Pineiro was pitching on seven days' rest, in part because the realignment of the pitching schedule worked out last week will enable Pineiro to face Oakland -- a team against which he's 2-0 this year -- twice in the final 10 days of the season. But it also enabled him to face the Rangers, against whom he'd thrown a two-hit shutout on July 26. Pineiro had been scheduled to pitch Sunday, but by getting pushed back he was able to use the extra time to work in the bullpen on two pitches that turned out to be dynamic for him last night.
The first was his fastball. Pineiro generally hits 95mph on the radar gun once or twice a game. Last night he hit it repeatedly. It wasn't just the regular Safeco Field radar gun that said so, either. One of the scouts' guns also caught him at 95mph.
And the time off had allowed him to work on his slider. Pineiro's slider is supposed to break away from right-handed batters. But when it's at its best, it also has "depth," which means it breaks down as it moves away.
"Joel's been throwing the slider hard all year," pitching coach Bryan Price said. "My feeling was that maybe he was throwing it so hard that it wasn't getting enough depth. It was looking more like a cut fastball, and maybe that was making the hitters' adjustments too easy."
Tonight, Joel had great depth. The slider was a big pitch for him. But his changeup and curve were great, too. That's as good stuff as you are going to see. There are guys who throw harder, yes. But to have that combination velocity with four pitches that he was able to throw for strikes, you don't see that very often.
The Rangers didn't see it much at all.
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