With a spot in the rotation no longer available, Maine is willing to pitch out of the bullpen. The Mets, however, do not feel that he is suited to relieving.
“He has trouble getting his arm ready before starts,” pitching coach Dan Warthen said. “I would worry about his resilience (in the bullpen). It’s one of the most difficult roles in baseball.”…
The sniping continued Saturday, when Manuel made light of Maine’s difficult situation, joking that he would “pitch him on off days.”
– Andy Martino, N.Y. Daily News.
Look: I don’t aim to complain that John Maine has likely thrown his last pitch for the Mets. Though I have always held out hope for Maine and suspect he’ll again pitch decently someday, it does not appear Maine will ever flourish in Flushing. I could argue that it would be silly for a team without much pitching depth to part with a pitcher and point out that Maine, as bad as he was this year, still posted a better K:BB ratio than Fernando Nieve and a lower WHIP than Ryota Igarashi. And it’s much easier to pitch in relief than in the rotation.
Whatever. I’m biased toward Maine because he seems like precisely my type of weirdo, but Maine has been pretty bad since the middle of the 2008 season when his shoulder first started acting up.
My quibble, in this situation, is not with Maine’s departure as much as the way Manuel and Warthen are handling it. I try not to put too much stock in the things baseball players or coaches say to the media since I can’t imagine it massively impacts much of anything, but at best the pair seem unprofessional and at worst like total jerks.
Why throw John Maine under the bus when he has been riding in the wheel-well for two years? I get and appreciate that Manuel’s a funny guy, but it seems patently wrong for a manager to make jokes at the expense of his players. I wonder how Jerry would feel if, during a losing streak, Omar Minaya went to the press with punchlines about all the ill-conceived bunts and overworked relievers.
And I wonder how Dan Warthen would feel if one of his bosses pointed out the way Maine’s career has taken a nosedive since the Mets replaced Rick Peterson with Warthen, regardless of whether that has mattered.
Again, I’m not sure it means much in the long run, and this has never been a place for moral judgments or sanctimony. But this sure looks like the Manuel and Warthen are again deflecting blame away from themselves, toward a player.
Tedquarters 
preach.
Amen. I believe Steve Popper called it “completely unprofessional” on the twitter this weekend.
Jerry Manuel: Bad Manager and Worse Person
Maine is finished but the comments are unprofrssional and uncalled for. Perhaps Manuel felt that this was the only way to get Omar and the and the Wilpons to see the light. It’s no wonder players aren’t clamoring to come to the Mets.
Maine is finished but the comments are unprofessional and uncalled for. Perhaps Manuel felt that this was the only way to get Omar and the and the Wilpons to see the light. It’s no wonder players aren’t clamoring to come to the Mets.
Then, as if on cue, Jon Heyman goes on his twitter to declare that now is the time for the Mets to extend Jerry Manuel because of the “positive vibe” he brings to the team.
Oy.
Positive vibes — from the Latin for “accomodating to the media”
What is the full context of the comment? I don’t belive Jerry would have just came out and said that without it being in response to some sort of question or comment. On the surface its sounds rather unprofessional but I always hesitate to make judgement on snipets of comments that writters like Martino post.
I’d at least like to know what the comment wa sin response too. Is there any video of it or something that gives more of the quotes?
The full context of the Jerry comment, I believe, was that he said neither Dickey nor Takahashi would be removed from the rotation for Maine, but then said that Maine is a starter. So when someone followed up and asked, “then when is Maine going to pitch?” He said, “on off days.”
That kind of exactly what I was talking about. Put in this context, Jerry was asked a dumb question by a writter, and he gave a dumb answer.
He basically made a joke to deflect what was obvioulsy a tough question, that most could reason the answer too themselves. His alternative to saying what he said was what exactly? He was for the most part forced to acknowlegde that Dickey and Takahashi were not leaving the rotation, and rightfully so, how could he say otherwise. And there is no room for him in the pen, so his only other option besides making a joke like that was to say Maine sucks and has no spot on the team? I dont think it would have been appropriate for him to say either.
How was that a dumb question to ask? It seems like the most logical question one could ask.
And there are a million ways he could have answered it. I’m fairly certain the Mets aren’t the first team in history to have an injured player lose his spot on the team. Yet it seems nearly every other manager can handle these questions without being a d-bag to a player fighting to battle back from injury. Somehow, this remains beyond Jerry.
I’ll preface this by saying that in my humble opinion the smart guys — love y’all though I do — on the blogosphere seem to have lost all perspective on Jerry Manual. (I’m not being sarcastic here — you and the crew at AA are absolutely among the best.)
I’m no Jerry apologist, but he’s become a caricature on the interwebs. No hyperbole is completely out of hand. No need for context when it comes to Jerry’s monkeyshines. When he subscribes to the same worn out, cliched, debunked “book” that supposedly good managers also still use it’s evidence of “Jerryball”.
This to me is a prime example…
Jerry and Dan *clearly* could have and should have been the bigger men in this situation — no question. But Ted, you don’t think this incident has anything to do with Maine blasting Jerry in the press on multiple days after being removed from his last start? Maine didn’t burn *any* bridges with the act he put on, even after it was clear he was hurt?
Again. Jerry should have been a bigger guy. But “throwing under the bus” is what Isiah Thomas did to Don Cheney on David Letterman. As you no doubt recall, the former Knicks coach was in over his head but tried to handle things with class and dignity. I think Maine is a poor fit for the role of undeserving victim. And likewise, I think the black tophat, cape, and handlebar mustache aren’t such good fits for Jerry either.
Jerry’s got a lot to answer for, as do most managers. All things considered, you’d rather the manager not joke around about a player who is fighting to save his career from injury. At the same time, I don’t see this as an indictment of Jerry’s character anymore than Maine’s behavior leading up to this is an indictment.
I see what you’re saying, and I don’t think Maine is entirely innocent here. And I’d probably just let it go if it didn’t reflect a pattern. Remember that Warthen suggested the Mets’ catchers were responsible for the team-wide inability to throw strikes last season, and Manuel had his whole thing with Ryan Church.
I don’t know the nature of Manuel’s relationship with any of his players, and the players do seem to enjoy playing for him. But talk to just about any player or ex-player about what makes for a good manager, and he’ll stress the importance of the manager having his back publicly. Bobby Valentine got a lot of heat for having a big ego — rightfully so, maybe — but he generally did a great job of putting players’ mistakes on his own shoulders.
Manuel has a way of subtly divorcing himself from many of the things that go wrong in a game — instead of “we were sending him,” it was, “he has a green light,” etc. He’s very likely being honest, but he rarely seems to step out of his way to take heat for a player’s error.
I dont think thats entirely true, I’ve plenty of times seen Jerry take blame off players. He always says things like “we need to do a better job of…..” in reference to getting players prepared for certain spots, or getting pitchers the right matchps when pitchers give up runs etc.
Also, there are plenty of managers, considered to be ‘good managers’ like Ozzie Guillen or Lou Pinella, who constantly rake thier players over the coals.
My larger point is that I think we — I’m lumping myself in this category — have a classic perceptual bias. We’ve become so hypersensitive to JerOmar’s (many legitimate) faults we can’t acknowledge positive steps. The Maine situation was handled about as differently from Church or even Beltran as possible, but rhetorically people are connecting those three instances rather than separating them.
For the record, I wish we had a better manager. It’s just that manager is really hard to significantly upgrade. The woods are full of guys like Jerry. They may not come with a bunting fetish, but it’ll be something else. Almost the most you can expect is for them to be thoughtful about and responsive to their mistakes. Slowly and uncertainly maybe that’s beginning to happen.
I’m sure these types of things, make us incredibly attractive in the off-season for big name free agents.
Every year something ahppens and people say that its going to make Free Agents not want to come here, like this, or the injuries last year, or the collapse the year before etc. Jerrys spat last year with Ryan Church was supposed to crumble the Mets hopes of landing any FA’s wasnt it?
And yet, every year, the Mets seem to have no problem signing free agents. Why is that? Because when a player is a free agent, money for the most part is what makes the players decide where to go. Not Jerrys joke about John Maine, or his harsh words for Ryan Church. I’d be hard pressed to believe that players around the league would even hear about this in the first place, let alone care.
This isn’t actually true, we had a problem signing free agents this year, and players said they wouldn’t waive their NTC for us.