2009 Player Preview: John Maine

by Sam Page on Feb 11, 2009 9:51 AM EST Comment 30 comments

John Maine's 2008 showed promise but ended in disappointment. His fastball looked sharp, dialing up to 95 consistently, averaging 94. After his first 100 innings, however, Maine struggled. He battled a strained rotator cuff, causing his walks to balloon and his fastball's velocity to steadily drop.

The injury wasn't a red herring, either. He stopped throwing his slider almost entirely, and as a result, pitched more to contact. His changeup is not as good as his slider and not a sufficient out-pitch.

Over the offseason, doctors removed the biggest bone spur in Major League history from Maine's arm. John claims to be 100%, and he's already throwing in Port St. Lucie.

Assuming then, that he's full strength, there is plenty of reasons to be optimistic about Maine's season. If he throws his bendy pitch more often, his strikeouts should increase and his LD/GB/FB rates (pictured below) will normalize, allowing him to take advantage of Citi Field.

Will Carroll's Team Health Reports list John Maine as red, or the highest level of injury risk. That should be no surprise, as Mets fans have recently seen how debiltating rotator cuff injuries can be. He's a big injury risk in 2009, but Maine could be a solid #2 by midseason.

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I don't really know what a bone spur is

but having it shaved off sound horrific.

by cjmulrain on Feb 11, 2009 9:54 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

Yeah

I had a bone spur on my heel when I was a kid – was kind of an intense burning/tingling sensation and it eventually went away after I used a special insert in my sneaker for a long time when playing sports. I can’t imagine what a bone spur in the shoulder feels like.

by jasondg on Feb 11, 2009 10:29 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

eh.

having a bone spur, while painful and downright shitty, is nothing like have a torn flexor tendon, ala Sheets, or a torn anything for that matter.

by HotChipWillBreakYourLegs on Feb 11, 2009 10:23 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

by Sokojoe on Feb 11, 2009 10:26 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

No wonder he lost

3 MPH on his fastball and didn’t want to throw his slider. I’m expecting big things from him this year. Kerri Walsh can attest that an athlete can come back in a big way after bone spur surgery.

by Sokojoe on Feb 11, 2009 10:33 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

IF he can stay healty

And can be counted on to pitch every 5 days then that’s a huge boost to the rotation. My fear is that he and/or Pelfrey will either have to be on “special” schedules/lighter workloads, that might not be the right word, or will actually get injued. But if both of them can stay healthy I’ll feel 100x better about the rotation.

by Gina on Feb 11, 2009 11:07 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

Honestly

For all of the talk of Rick Peterson keeping pitchers healthy, I think he screwed Maine up. Peterson likes to pitch down in the zone and nibble. Maine’s stuff does not translate well to that kind of approach, IMO.

I felt like he got away from that great rising fastball he had in ’07 last year and he threw waaay too many pitches in his appearances. I hope Warthen tells Maine to just go out there and let it fly… go challenge hitters.

Maine’s stuff is good enough that he should trust it and attack, rather than nibble, nibble, nibble.

by SQUAD on Feb 11, 2009 1:16 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

RP

I agree with this assessment of Peterson. He had an approach, and his pitchers pitched to that approach for the most part. He didn’t allow guys to use their strengths to get batters out, they generally had to use the Peterson philosophy. I think Warthen’s style is better suited to our staff. He loves the different approaches each guy brings.

by whynot on Feb 11, 2009 1:32 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I disagree with you about

Peterson’s apporach. Peterson was a proponant of pitching down in the zone, but in no way did he advocate nibbling. Peterson was very much aware of pitch counts and the harm of walks, therefore, he taught his pitchers to trust the D and pitch more to contact (groundballs) than trying to strikeout everyone. This is shown by his Oakland days with Zito, Hudson, and Mulder, in fact I remember Mulder stating that Peterson convinced him to try for less strikeouts and pitch to contact to keep his pitch count down.

I think your logic is short starts from Maine is a result of too many pitches is a result of nibbling is a result of Peterson’s coaching style of telling his pitchers to nibble.

While I believe it’s more short starts from Maine is a result of lots of foul balls is a result of decreased fastball speed from bone spurs in addition to a lack of secondary pitches.

I hope that made sense.

by Sokojoe on Feb 11, 2009 1:59 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

JM

While I can see your point that RP didn’t advocate nibbling per se, his demand to pitch down in the zone wasn’t a good fit for Maine (or Perez imo). I don’t think any of Zito, Hudson or Mulder are good comps style wise with JM or OP. So while a good knee high fastball on the corner is wonderful, I think JM and OP both wound up trying to pitch down too much rather than challenging with a lesser quality strike with their superior ‘stuff’.

A healthy Maine should reduce his pitch count since he can use his slider more and hopefully he’ll see fewer fouls back and more swings and misses. Hopefully that’ll get him through 6 plus more of the time.

by whynot on Feb 11, 2009 2:32 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Fair point.

However, as whynot mentions, Peterson seemed to want OP and JM to hit spots, i.e., low and away, hight and tight, etc. IMO, guys like Maine and OP are better off throwing to areas (high, low, inside, outside) and just letting their natural stuff take over, instead of hitting spots.

And this is why whynot’s point about Zito, Hudson, and Mulder being bad comps for JM and OP is a great one. From what I recall from their Oakland days, the former 3 had good control and their fastballs are straighter than the formers’.

Also, even though Peterson may state this as his philosophy, there is a difference in stated philosophy and what happened in practice. Watching the Mets the past two seasons there were times when I would get so frustrated with our pitchers because it seemed like they kept trying to make the perfect pitch, instead of just trusting their stuff.

I know Pelfrey gives Peterson a lot of credit, but I do think there is something to Pelfrey blossoming after Peterson left (and I am aware that the turn around technically began while Peterson was still around.) I think Big Pelf stopped worrying about making the perfect pitch and said to himself, “Hey, I throw a heavy sinker in the mid-90s, why the heck am I so worried about perfectly locating it?”

Guys like Moyer and Glavine need to rely on changing speed and perfect location or they’ll get blown off the mound. But guys like Pelfrey, Maine, and Ollie have really nice movement on their pitches, so they shouldn’t worry so much about being perfect and should just throw to areas and let the natural movement on their pitches do the rest.

I would like to conclude my pitching rant by saying that I generally enjoyed Peterson’s time as pitching coach and thought he did a very good job keeping the pitchers healthy overall. I just felt like he was a bit stubborn about having pitchers follow his approach instead of taking each pitcher on an individual basis (see: Bell, Heath.)

by SQUAD on Feb 11, 2009 4:12 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Yeah, just to clarify

I wasn’t trying to compare the big three to our guys, nor was I defending Peterson. Just wanted to note that I don’t believe the “nibbling/not trusting one’s stuff” was due to a pitching philosphy.

Just to add about Pelfrey, in a post I wrote back in July, I stated that Pelfrey’s turnaround was due to mixing his four seamer in with his two seamer (as well as confidence) which Peterson seemed to be originally against but later changed his mind before he got fired.

Last, I completely agree about Bell but the whole organization hated him for some reason that was never reported or because he was fat.

by Sokojoe on Feb 11, 2009 4:37 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

To be more specific

Warthen believes in throwing fast balls up in the zone, which might suit Maine’s “rising” fastball.

King of the bling come to lay down the evidence//Not George Bush, L-Millz be da president

by Sam Page on Feb 11, 2009 5:32 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

What's up with that graph...?

Does Maine throw three different off-speed pitches, or is that really all just variance in his change-up?

by psiogen on Feb 11, 2009 1:03 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

To my knowledge

Maine is a fastball/slider/changeup pitcher.

Also, last season he seemed to try and add a cut fastball, or at least one that moves horizontally, in addition to his rising four seamer that he used to great success in ’07.

by SQUAD on Feb 11, 2009 1:18 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Maine also threw

roughly 20 curveballs last season after Warthen took over.

by Sokojoe on Feb 11, 2009 2:05 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I think those are 3 different pitches

The graph is from Josh Kalk’s players cards. http://baseball.bornbybits.com/2008/John_Maine.html

My impression from looking at these cards is that some of them are more raw than others. i.e. all the pitches aren’t color-coded sperarately. Looking at the full player card with velocity graphs, 3 blobs are clearly visible within the pink dots. My understanding is the following:

-The blob directly underneath his fastball is his change. It’s ~86mph on average. Not a great differential from his 94mph FB
-The looser blob to the right of the change is Maine’s slider. A changeup doesn’t cut more than a fastball & it’s too slow to represent a cutter. It’s also thrown a tad faster than the change, maybe 87-88.
-The small collection of dots underneath the slider represents the few curves he threw. ~80mph

by OlStubbleBeard on Feb 11, 2009 2:18 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Quick thought.

Anyone ever think Maine would make a good to great closer? His rising fastball is somewhat reminiscent of Mariano’s in that it seems that hitters can’t catch up to it and it catches them off guard. If he ever developed a changeup like Gagne’s or Johan’s, one that kind of drops off a table, he would be pretty devastating in 1-2 inning stints.

I believe this has been talked about before, but with his health concerns, maybe Omar would have been more prudent in shifting Maine to the pen to pitch the 7th/8th, trading for Putz to close, and then reallocating the K-Rod money to signing Lowe and Ollie.

So the rotation would have been: Johan, Lowe, Ollie, Pelfrey, Redding.

With the bullpen being something like: Random Pitcher, Stokes, Duaner, Feliciano, Green, Maine, Putz.

by SQUAD on Feb 11, 2009 1:25 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

I actually agree

but as with the Yankee Joba-debate, are you better off with a great closer, or a good starter? How good of a closer would Maine have to be to justify giving him 100+ less innings a year?

by cjmulrain on Feb 11, 2009 4:58 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

It wouldn't just be whether you're better off with a good starter or a great closer

It would be whether you’re better off with Lowe in the rotation and Maine in the bullpen or Maine in the rotation K-rod in the bullpen.

by Gina on Feb 11, 2009 5:05 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I'll take

a good 3rd starter, if that’s what Maine is, versus a “good to great closer.” We might be overstating his health concerns; we’ll see.

If Maine developed a Johan changeup – fat chance – screw closing, he’ll win Cy Young awards.

by jasondg on Feb 11, 2009 1:45 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Agreed.

I believe in making a guy a SP if he is going to be around league average.

I was interested to see what people thought of him coming out of the pen if his shoulder made/makes him an injury risk.

by SQUAD on Feb 11, 2009 4:01 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

by squid92 on Feb 11, 2009 2:44 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

by Sam Page on Feb 11, 2009 9:33 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I'd feel better

about losing a 1-game playoff than about not even forcing one. Plus, it would give the Mets an excuse to put up some more banners, right next to the embarassing “wild card winner” banner.

by cjmulrain on Feb 12, 2009 9:45 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs