Last night's 15-inning game made one thing clear - Joel Pineiro is a different pitcher this year. When you look at his command of the strike zone, it's no wonder he's had such success.

First off, if anybody is interested in a Rockin' the Red t-shirt, send me an e-mail at kujo@rockinthered.com, and I'll put you on the waiting list. Price will be $15, including shipping, but I need enough people interested first. I need at least 9 more.

When you talk about a marathon game, you always wonder if the people that stay at the game for that long actually have lives. Well, yesterday - or earlier today, I should say - I was one of those people. Truth is, I don't have a life when it comes to Cardinals baseball. We probably could have stayed another 9 innings if we had to. The biggest concern I had was if we would be be mugged walking back to the garage at 2:00 in the morning.

The tickets were pretty good for getting at face value - section 597 bleachers, 6 rows up in left center field. I only mention this because it allowed us to have a great view of the strike zone and how Joel Pineiro was pitching, and, boy, he was masterful. 73 of his 112 pitches were strikes, which chalks up to a whopping 65% strike percentage. For the season, Joel's thrown pitches for strikes 66% of the time. If you take out this season, Joel has a 63% strike percentage for his career.

FanGraphs has a couple other stats that show the change in Pineiro's results this year. First of all, Joel's rate of using his fastball this year is 70.3%, up from 58.4% last year. For his career, Joel has used the fastball 59% of the time, and, if you exclude this year, that number drops to just 57.7%. The fastball, of course, is what has changed in Joel's repertoire, or, I should say, the sinking fastball.

FanGraphs has a stat that calculates a pitch's "Runs Above Average," giving a quantifiable value to how good a pitcher's pitches are when he uses them. This article is a great overview of how it works, but basically is accounts for the run values of each situation a pitch is thrown, i.e. whether it's a strike in a 2-1 count or a ball in a 2-2 count.

In Pineiro's case, his fastball has been much more effective this year in that it has accounted for more strikes in the strike zone and more outs from balls hit in play. This year, Joel's wFB - Runs Above Average for his fastball - is 17.8, which, in comparison, is the only positive number for Joel aside from 2003 with the M's (16.5). What this means is that Joel's fastball is actually saving him runs instead of costing him runs, and it's been quite effective.

FanGraphs also has a leaderboard for pitch values, and, sure enough, Pineiro is up there in 5th place for wFB, behind Washburn, Haren, Wolf, and tied with Verlander and... fitting, Clayton Kershaw. Last night truly was a great pitching match-up from an unlikely pairing. Chris Carpenter (15.1 wFB) is in 8th place.

The movement on Pineiro's fastball and the way it's been used has been a big factor in his 2009 success. When you're constantly getting ahead in counts with it, it's going to put up positive run-saving values because the hitter is always in the disadvantageous situation.

Even when the ball is hit, the movement on the fastball has boosted his ground ball percentage up to 61.1%, and, especially with this defense behind him, that's going to account for a lot of runs saved. So, not only is he pounding the strike zone with his fastball, he's getting lots and lots of outs with it. I would be throwing it more than two-thirds of the time too.

Last night was an awesome night of just plain good baseball. Sure, there were some mistakes made, but, overall, we were treated to a game that had everything in it but a home run. Let's make it a sweep tonight.