Opening Day Rotation '06

Hi, everybody. Glad to be aboard. As the pitchers are more or less all reported in and position players are trickling in, I figured I'd take a slightly deeper look at the starting rotation prospects that we have going into this 2006 season. Pedro Martinez, Tom Glavine and Steve Trachsel have spots locked down, while perennial underachiever Victor Zambrano and starter-turned-reliever-turned-starter Aaron Heilman still have something to prove if they want to be in the rotation. It’s not likely that the Mets will promote more than one rookie into the starting five, and Heilman’s setup man job has been usurped by Jorge Julio and Duaner Sanchez, so it seems certain that at least one of the Zambrano/Heilman duo will make the rotation. The other spot will be open to competition, primarily from Brian Bannister, Alay Soler and John Maine, though Yusaku Iriki, Jason Scobie and maybe even Mike Pelfrey will be in the picture. In this post, I'll try to shed some light on the familiar (Bannister), the sort-of-familiar (Soler) and the not-too-familiar (Maine). Brian Bannister is like the David Wright of pitchers. Great work ethic, high confidence. These are guys who make the best of their talent. The son of retired Major Leaguer Floyd Bannister, Brian was brought up in baseball and it’s no accident that he is where he is now. Statistically, there is a lot to liker. As far as ERA and wins go, 2005 was a breakout season for him, but it’s a season that his statistics have been predicting from the beginning. Bannister’s K:BB ratio has been very good throughout his minor league career, even when his ERA left something to be desired. Though Bannister hasn’t equaled the astounding 3.93 K:BB ratio that he put up for high-A St. Lucie in 2004, he has nearly seamlessly completed the adjustment to every level of the minor league system. Though his strikeout numbers haven’t stood out, he has put up some very respectable totals, including fanning 48 in 45.1 IP after being called up to Norfolk last year. Though his strikeout numbers will most likely fall as he makes the transition to the big leagues, a performance like that in the high levels of the minors is very encouraging. Bannister also has a history of surrendering very few home runs. Keep the ball in the park, strike out more than twice as many guys as you walk, and you’re already most of the way to being a successful MLB pitcher – especially in a pitcher-friendly park like Shea. Enjoy it while you can, Mets pitchers! Scouts concern themselves with the low velocity of Bannister’s fastball and his fairly mediocre breaking pitches, but Tom Glavine has fashioned a Hall of Fame career out of about the same. Still, Bannister gets thrown in the pool of all the other guys like him and will need to have an outstanding spring training to be considered for the fifth rotation spot. Alay Soler is a bit more difficult to analyze. Soler’s repertoire includes an excellent slider, decent fastball and knucklecurve, and mediocre changeup. Scouts and GMs love him and he pitched to a good ERA in winter ball though with a low strikeout rate for a guy with a mid-90s fastball. That's borne out by his stats in Cuba, where in 2003 he struck out just 102 in 125.1 innings – while walking only 17. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that's a great K:BB ratio. Though Soler apparently has good stuff and has had success in Cuba and the winter leagues, it’s important to remember the not-so-fine line between those leagues and the majors. Ultimately, I think if Soler makes the Mets in 2006 it will be as a reliever and spot starter. More than anything, he reminds me of Jorge Julio, but I’m given to understand that Soler has better makeup than Julio does. If his stuff matches up to the major league level – and there seems to be little reason that it wouldn’t – I can see him as the Mets’ new Roberto Hernandez for some years to come. John Maine, a.k.a. that other guy that we got for Kris Benson, is the final serious candidate for the fifth rotation spot. The advantage that Maine has over Bannister and Soler is that he has a little bit of major league experience, though it hasn’t been a good experience for him. The 6.30 ERA that he pitched to last year is cringe-inducing, but there are some bright spots for Maine, who was dominant throughout his stay in the Orioles’ farm system – at least, until he got to Triple-A Ottawa. Maine has a lot of natural ability that he can make good on. He throws a fastball in the mid-90s that accompanies an excellent slider and an inconsistent curveball and changeup. Maine’s strikeout rate in the lower levels of the minor leagues was outstanding (10.23 over 63 minor league outings), his walks and hits numbers low. Try this one on for size: in Maine’s two plus years in A and AA ball, he didn’t have a WHIP over 1.00. Unfortunately, we still haven’t seen that talent carry over to higher levels. Upon his promotion to Ottawa, Maine’s hits, home runs, and walks numbers shot up, while his strikeout numbers fell. For the first time in his professional career, Maine allowed more hits than innings pitched. Though he still posted a K:BB ratio slightly over 2, it was his first stop in the minors where he failed to average a strikeout per inning. His one shot at a major league start in 2004 season saw him get chased in the 4th inning, having allowed 4 runs on 7 hits and 3 walks with just one strikeout. In 2005, Maine continued to post low strikeout numbers and high walk numbers, not to mention a drastically higher home run rate. At this point, Maine can only be classified as a Rick Peterson reclamation project. It’s hard to say what has caused his sudden and pretty out-of-the-blue problems, but it may just be that the more patient high-level hitters simply caught onto the two mediocre pitches that he was able to sneak by the younger minor leaguers. Unless Peterson manages to work one of his famous 15-minute corrections, Maine probably starts the year in Norfolk and only makes the Mets if a couple guys get injured. Even then, though, he's got to be behind guys like Bannister, Soler, Jason Scobie and Pelfrey, who every Mets fan is drooling over after the reports of the last couple days. My prediction is that the '06 starting rotation will have Zambrano and Heilman in it, at least at the beginning, thanks to the immense power of inertia. It's my feeling that those two have to prove that they don't belong in the rotation, while Bannister, Soler and the rest have to prove that they do. That's a lot of proving that has to go down. Since the Mets basically annihilated their depth of major league-experienced starters to open up a spot in the rotation for Heilman and traded away their best pitching prospect since Doc Gooden to get Zambrano, it's going to be quite the uphill battle for the newcomers to unseat anyone.