Finishing offers him fresh start

For all the eyes that are on Daisuke Matsuzaka this spring, there may be no Red Sox pitcher this spring who comes under closer scrutiny -- the pun is intended -- than Joel (pronounced jo-ELL) Pineiro, perhaps the most unlikely candidate to be auditioning as closer for a team with a $160 million payroll.

Of all American League pitchers who threw at least 150 innings last season, only one had an earned run average over 6. That was Pineiro, whose 6.36 ERA was the worst in the majors. Only two AL pitchers this decade who threw 150 or more innings had a higher ERA: Jose Lima (6.99 for Kansas City in 2005) and David Cone (6.91 for the Yankees in 2000).

And no one thought of inviting Lima or Cone to camp the following year to audition as closer.

Asking Pineiro to do so now is almost as improbable as if the Red Sox had asked him 10 years ago, when he was here playing for Edison Junior College and his only sniff of the big leagues came when he sat on the bench in an exhibition game against the Twins.

"I was down at the beach one night having some dinner," Pineiro recalled, "and I ran into Mo Vaughn at a gas station in his white Mercedes. I'm thinking, 'Holy crap.' And then three, four years later, I was facing him."

The setting he returns to here bears little resemblance to the one he left in 1997, after he was Florida Junior College Player of the Year and the Mariners drafted him on the 12th round after seeing him in a tryout camp. The area itself has undergone a remarkable growth spurt -- "half the stuff here wasn't here then," he said -- and Pineiro is now a major league veteran trying to reinvent himself at age 28, a la Dennis Eckersley, from bottomed-out starter into last-call stopper.