Thursday, October 05, 2006

John Maine Does Not Take The Fifth

Man, that was one scary game. The Mets were one freakish double play at the plate away from losing it. Anyway, despite that, I was a little surprised yesterday when Willie came out with the hook for John Maine in the fifth inning. Yes, he’d given up a single and a walk; but with a one-run lead and starting pitching in short supply, I thought that Willie might leave him in. He was just a ground ball away from getting out of the inning and qualifying for the W, and Maine had struck out Kenny Lofton twice already.

My impression about Maine from his regular season starts was that he would pitch well for like four innings, before imploding in the fifth; and I guess that’s what Willie was thinking. Anyway, to see if my impression matched up with reality, I did a little research and found this:



Those are John Maine’s lines from each inning in his 16 appearances for the Mets this year, including a single inning in relief. Wow. He’s Johan Santana for three innings, and then he’s Jose Lima. Good call, Willie Randolph.

After the third inning, his walks and HR allowed go through the roof. But why? Is he getting tired? Where does his control go? He still strikes people out at a decent rate, and his BAA is good, but too many of those hits in the 4th and 5th are going for home runs.

Tomorrow, maybe, I’ll have time to go into what I think is going on with this. But right now I need to go drink some beer and watch me some METS, baby!

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home