John Maine is Not Out of the Woods Yet

Flushing Baseball DailyApr 29, 2010

John Maine was supposed to be a big part of the Mets rotation this season. General manager Omar Minaya said as much this offseason as he skipped out on signing any free agent starters and elected to stand pat with what he had. However, after Maine’s second start of the season it was abundantly clear that he might not be the pitcher they thought he was.

Since that second start he has pitched with mix results. He’s got a winning record, 1-0, and the Mets are winning when he pitches, 2-1. He’s also had a respectable 3.68 ERA and 16 strikeouts in just 14.2 innings. That’s where you start to see the problems. He’s only pitched 14.2 innings in three starts, an average of less than five innings per start, not good.

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He’s also falling in love with his fastball. Last night PitchFX tracked 95 pitches out of the 101 he threw. Out of those 95 pitches, 90 of them were fastballs. That’s not bad for a guy who said he has to get his fastball going, the problem is, and I’ve talked about it before , he’s got to get his other pitches going too. Right now his wFB is rated at -8.4 by FanGraphs. That means his fastball is about eight runs below average. He probably shouldn’t be relying so much on that pitch then.

To make matters worse, his velocity is still nowhere near where it used to be and I suppose we’d better get used to that. In 2008 his fastball sat at 92.3 mph on average. This year it is sitting at 88.9 mph on average and was even worse, 87.6 mph, last night. The question then becomes, can he live at 88 mph?

His K-rate says he can. He is striking out 9.13 batters per nine innings, better than his career total of 7.53. The problem is that he seems to have forgotten, or lost trust in, his other pitches. Averaging less than five innings per start shows that Maine is not pitching to contact like he once did and is keeping himself from going deep into games.

Also, while his fastball has always been his best pitch, he did have a pretty strong slider and a changeup that kept hitters honest. If he’s throwing 90 out of 100 pitches as fastballs he might keep striking batters out, but he’s going to continue to leave games early and struggle with consistency.

I’m glad he’s still in the rotation and at least for now has turned his game around. But this is not John Maine the pitcher we remember and he’s got a few problems to work through still. He’s lost velocity off his fastball and has seemingly abandoned his secondary pitches altogether. It seems like right now it’s only a matter of time before Maine gets blown out again.