Note: John Maine wants to Return to 2007
John Maine and Jerry Manuel met for more than 30 minutes prior to yesterday’s game.
Maine told Manuel he’s 100 percent healthy, the two men agreed Maine must return to throwing his fastball more, and so Maine will start Sunday in St. Louis against the Cardinals.
Maine also told reporters he had an extensive meeting with Dan Warthen, during which the team watched video of him in 2007, in which they noticed a significant ‘mechanical difference.’
Prior to yesterday’s game, Maine explained:
“I wanted to tell (Manuel) was that I’m fine, my shoulders fine. I know the No. 1 priority is to get back and throw my fastball. That’s what I’m going to do in my bullpen. That’s what I’m going to do in my next start I’m going to get back to where I was… There’s a big difference (in my delivery). I don’t want to get in to why that it is, but there’s a difference. I’m going to scratch everything I’ve been doing this Spring, and get back to what I was doing two years ago… I’m just going to go back to that delivery, going back to throwing the fastball. Hopefully it turns out fine. I may get hit, but, you know, at least I know I’m going out there, getting beat with my best pitch and not my second and third pitch.”
…it does seem like he was at his best, in 2007, when he was just letting the ball fly, free and easy and being aggressive in his approach… hopefully a return to that mindset and some mechanical adjustments will return him to form… he’s been successful before… so, if healthy, it makes no sense that, just three years later, at 29 years old, he shouldn’t be able to harness whatever he once had…
“He’s a guy that has won at this level and he’s a very competitive young man and he’s also fearless,” Manuel explained. “But, he needs to get back to being able to let that fastball go and command it better than he has… If you don’t use it you lose, like anything else.”
