Bold Baseball Prediction

I know a lot of my faithful readers on this blog will probably be coming over here from Associated Content and most of those people are not fans of my sports articles, but my other articles. So I won’t bore you all with my season predictions for this upcoming baseball season, especially since my predictions aren’t a whole lot different from many others. There is one prediction that I’m going to make unlike anybody else. I’m taking a step out on the limb and making one very bold prediction. Here it goes:

2008 National League Cy Young = John Maine

Yes, I know it sounds crazy. Everybody is talking about the New York Mets acquisition of Johan Santana and the health of Pedro Martinez and John Maine at this point is an after thought, but I think it’s possible. Let’s take a look at the reasons.

Last Season – Last season at the All-Star break John Maine was 10 – 4 with a 2.71 ERA. Only three National League pitchers were having better seasons: Brad Penny, Jake Peavy and Chris Young. Maine struggled the second half of the season and ended up with only 15 wins and a 3.91 ERA. Maine’s second half struggles were talked about a lot but what people failed to mention was that there was a perfectly good reason. Before last season John Maine’s career highs were 15 games started and 90 innings pitched. Last season John Maine pitched 32 games and 191 innings pitched. He pitched a full 100 innings more than the previous season. Maine will be better prepared for a full season this year and he won’t falter in the second season like he did last year.

Offense – A lot of people are talking about Carlos Delgado’s injury and I’m certainly concerned but Delgado’s injury will not ruin the Mets offense. Last season Delgado didn’t hit, Beltran didn’t hit, Reyes played awful the last month of the season and the Mets were still the fourth best offense in the National League and two of the teams ahead of them (Philly and Colorado) have offense friendly fields. The Mets role players didn’t get nearly enough credit for playing well the past few seasons and they have plenty of offense for John Maine to win a lot of games. If Carlos Beltran hits like he did two years ago they can lead the league in runs.

Age -John Maine is still only 26 years old and during this seasons John Maine will turn 27 years old. What is significant about that? There is a popular theory in baseball that the age of 27 is when a player hits his prime. It’s possible that this year John Maine becomes an even better pitcher than last season.

Rotation – Last season the Mets didn’t have Johan Santana or Pedro Martinez. John Maine had never played a full season and was counted on to be the ace pitcher. This year John Maine only has to be the number three pitcher. That is a ton of pressure off of Maine, especially in a city like New York.

Bullpen – The Mets finished just one game out in division despite everything bad possibly happening to them. Two of those things were Duaner Sanchez being injured for the entire season and Aaron Heilman being ineffective. I doubt both of those things happen again this year. If the bullpen is better then that helps the starting pitching a great deal and if by some chance Heilman and Sanchez revert back to two years ago then the Mets don’t have to worry about their starters going more than 5 – 6 innings.

Bottom line is a John Maine was a 15 game winner last season. He’s likely to get better and more experienced. He has less pressure on him, the pitching will be better and he has plenty of offense behind him. I don’t think it’s impossible to think that all of those things can equal in 5 more wins than last year and a 20 win season easily puts you in the Cy Young race.