John Maine (SP-Mets) John Maine left Friday night’s game against Atlanta after just 3.2 innings pitched. The cause: pain and spasms in his left elbow. Huh? Isn’t Maine a righty? Leave to a Met pitcher to find a way to injure his non-pitching arm that will probably land him on the 15 day DL. Maine has been on the steady decline over the past few seasons battling injuries and an escalating ERA (’07-- 3.91, ’08 – 4.18, ’09 – 4.43). After last year’s evenly distributed approach to batters of fastball, slider, change, he has gone back to using his fastball to set up his change and an occasional slider in his last two outing. The problem is that Maine’s velocity on his fastball has been on the decline hitting 87-88 mph pretty consistently on the radar gun allowing batters to easily foul off pitches and run the pitch count up on Maine. Before leaving Friday night’s game in the 4th inning, Maine had already thrown 63 pitches. Maine’s current ERA stands at 8.64 and regardless of whether this current ailment sends Maine to the Dl or not, Maine needs to be placed on your reserve bench until he is able to pitch deeper into games with some consistency. Whether that will happen is anyone’s guess as Maine appears to be struggling both physically and mentally.
Kevin Correia (SP—Padres) On the surface, Kevin Correia has done a fairly passable job this season as he notched his 3rd win on Friday while pitching against the Reds. Nothing fancy, but an adequate performance going 5.2 innings, allowing 2 ER and striking out 5. His ERA for the season now stands at a pretty solid 3.13. But we need to remove the veneer of the surface numbers and look at little deeper and see if these numbers make sense. Going into Friday’s game, Correia had a FIP of 4.36 which indicates that he has not exactly pitched on par with his ERA. The largest reason for the elevated FIP is because Correia has been giving up a few gopher balls with a HR/FB rate of 21.4%. But his FB% rate is only at 28.6% so the few fly balls he has given up this year have been costly. Correia’s xFIP of 3.21 is more in line with his ERA. xFIP accounts not just for the home runs given up (as FIP does) but also the fly balls allowed. Because Correia’s FB% is down, so is his likelihood of giving up a home run, so his xFIP right now looks pretty good. But with a BHIP of .257 and LOB% of 88%, we should expect Correia’s current numbers to not hold up. Careful with Correia going forward.
Luis Atilano (SP—Nationals) Luis Atilano made his Major League debut against the Manny-less Dodgers on Friday night and had better results than anyone could have expected. In fact, many National fans are probably wishing that Jason Marquis had gone on the DL a long time ago with the way Atilano pitched. He gave the Nationals 6 strong innings, allowing just 1 ER on 6 hits, 2 walks and a strikeout. Atilano is not a strikeout pitcher (career minor league K/9 of 4.8) as his fastball tops out at around 89 mph. He focuses more on control (career minor league BB/9 of 1.9) so his pitches will usually be around the plate. What made him so successful against the Dodgers was that he kept them off balance most of the game with a buffet of different pitches: fastball, slider, change up, sinker and curve ball. He threw a pretty even distribution of all of all of these pitches and obviously kept the Dodgers guessing. But before you start grabbing Atilano off your waiver wire, Atilano had a career ERA of 3.87 in the minors and because his pitches are around the plate his H/9 is pretty high for his minor league career at 9.7. Wait a while to see how Atilano does in his second outing since hitters may be clued in on his pitching pattern and he may be less successful. At best, he may be an option in NL only deep leagues.
Cole Hamels (SP—Phillies) OK, I have an idea for a policy that I think MLB should invoke. Any time a pitcher gives up 4 home runs in a single outing, the opposing team should take him out after the game and buy him a steak dinner. Because Cole Hamels should be ordering an extra large N.Y. strip after his dismal Friday night outing. He lasted 6 innings and did strikeout 7, but he allowed 6 ER with 3 of the 4 home runs coming in one inning. Hamels ERA jumped up from 3.85 to 5.11. Prior to this game Hamels has been doing a lot of things right. His GB% (52%) is up as are his strikeouts (K/9 – 9.16) but so are his home runs as he has allowed 7 through 4 starts. But at the end of the day, it would be safe to say that the game Friday against the Diamondbacks is really more of anomaly. Hamels probably won’t have another game like that all season and maybe not ever. With the development of a cutter, Hamels is still a premier option despite some shaky outings. If you have better options and are a little wary of Hamels after Friday, you may want to sit Hamels out next week as he goes face to face with Tim Lincecum. If he fairs well, you can feel comfortable getting him back in there on a regular basis as he will be a good source of wins for the offensive-minded Phillies.
Adam Dunn (1B—Nationals) Adam Dunn had one of his monster games Friday night, going 2-for-3 with 2 home runs. It was the kind of performance Dunn was looking for as he entered the game with just 1 home run and batting just .176. Yeah, that’s cold. He had been batting just .166 in the last 7 games prior to tonight so Friday’s numbers has allowed him to see the other side of .200 for only the second time this season. Part of the reason for Dunn’s low batting average is that left-handed pitchers have just been eating Dunn up. He is batting just .048 against southpaws compared to an unimpressive but less offensive career average of .234. Dunn’s BHIP is sitting at .216 compared to a .291 career BHIP so we know that he can do better than this. His LD% of 16.2% is low for him and his GB% of 40.5% is high so we should see some leveling off of those numbers that indicates an upswing. Despite, the lack of power and the woeful BA, Dunn still excels when it comes to plate disciple with an EYE of 1.07 which has kept his OBP solid at .385. Hopefully, Friday’s game is an indication that Dunn is righting himself.
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