Joel Pineiro Shines As FIU Baseball Drops Pirates On Sunday Special

MIAMI, FL – In attempts to aim for a series split, the FIU Panthers sent right-handed sophomore Joel Pineiro to take on the Seton Hall Pirates. In his last outing, Pineiro went five shutout innings, not allowing a hit, and struck out six. On Sunday, Pineiro went 6.2 innings and the Panthers won, 4-1.

For FIU, the pitching has been an up-and-down rollercoaster. Still, on Sunday, sophomore Joel Pineiro gave FIU the best pitching performance of the season, going six and two-thirds innings, giving up one run off of three hits, walking two, and striking out five.

“Joel threw the ball great,” said manager Rich Witten. “We know he can do that. He had a couple of different pitches working today and was locating the fastball well, so it’s good to see him do that.”

For the righty, Pineiro’s fastball was working well, in the low to mid 90s. His secondary stuff was also causing some swing and miss, but velo was the name of the game for Pineiro as well as being able to work quickly, averaging about ten pitches per inning.

“I knew I had six no-hits, I just had to stay aggressive,” said Pineiro after the game. “The game plan coming in was not looking for strikeouts. It was just being aggressive in the zone. They’re gonna put the ball in play and I was gonna let my defense work.”

His start came to a close in the top of the seventh inning after giving up an RBI single to Casey Cuminsky to give the Seton Hall Pirates their first run of the afternoon.

For the Panthers, in just the bottom of the first inning, Brylan West took Seton Hall starter Cole Hansen deep to left field for his third home run of the season.

“It was all about setting the tone,” said Witten. “We hadn’t been playing well. They knew they hadn’t been playing well. We knew they hadn’t been playing well, but we also know that we’re a much better team than what we’ve shown and we put challenges out there to them last night in a pretty confrontational way.”

As Joel Pineiro kept the Pirates hitless, in the fifth inning, FIU tacked on two more runs. Back-to-back walks for Chase Engelhard and Alex Ulloa allowed catcher Brendan Roney to hit a soft grounder which advanced both runners.

A grounder to short from Andre Martinez drove in Engelhard and Brylan West drove in Ulloa on an RBI single.

“We work on it [bunting] every day,” said Witten. “That’s part of the conversation with the team. We work on these things every day. You’re not using it as an opportunity, as a part of your game. They were giving it to us in certain situations like Becerra and Liquori.“

“Those guys are athletic and I love the bat, but the third baseman was playing way back they took advantage of what the defense was giving them.”

The finishing touches to the Sunday afternoon game would be put on an RBI single from Ryne Guida to drive in Andre Martinez who worked a four-pitch walk in his at-bat. This all occurred in the bottom of the eighth inning.

The Panthers would go on to defeat the Seton Hall Pirates to a final score of 4-1. “I think it’s awesome, man,” said Pineiro when asked about getting back into the series. “We got the momentum on our side and we’re ready to go for tomorrow.”

FIU goes back to above .500 with a 6-5 record and will close out the series on Monday at 6:00 pm against the Pirates. The game will be aired on ESPN+.