How Good is John Maine?

16May/080

How Good is John Maine?

MetsGeek recently posted an excellent piece by Danny titled How Inconsistent is Oliver Perez. I hope to post a response to that some day, but here I want to focus on John Maine. Danny compared Perez to Maine and showed that they were very similar in terms of inconsistency.

But let’s study John Maine’s inconsistency. He didn’t just scatter good starts and bad starts. His career includes 2 great stretches, and 2 horrendous stretches.

From his Major League debut with the Orioles on July 23, 2004 through his 3rd start with the Mets on July 8, 2006, John Maine was 2-7 with a 6.18 ERA.
From then through July 29, 2007 Maine was 19-7 with a 3.03 ERA.
From then through September 23, 2007, Maine was 2-5 with a 6.87 ERA
From then through today (May 16, 2008 ) Maine is 6-2 with a 2.42 ERA.

As a Met, Maine is 27-17, 3.62. Since finding his form on July 15, 2006, he’s 27-14, 3.55.

Maine said that he was playing hurt through his horrendous stretch last August and September. If you exclude that stretch, Maine is 25-9, 2.92 since July 15, 2006.

Obviously every pitcher looks better if you take out the bad parts, and you can always play with numbers to make a bad pitcher look like Cy Young.

But I think the numbers give strong reason for optimism. In July 2006 Maine became a very good pitcher. If you exclude the stretch where he says he was playing hurt, he’s been a great pitcher.

And to think we have Anna Benson to thank!

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