It’s early in the season but already Omar Minaya is in a position where he needs to make some tough decisions. But he hasn’t really been the poster boy for the ‘Good Decision Making Club” as this off season proved with his lackadaisical negotiation tactics with Bengie Molina and Joel Pineiro. This indecision extended into spring training when Daniel Murphy went down with a knee injury that was projected to keep him out of the lineup up to six weeks. Minaya made the curious decision to keep Mike Jacobs on the roster rather than the hot hitting first baseman of the future Ike Davis. It was a decision that made thousands of Mets fans collectively scream “Why?!?”

If Daniel Murphy had been healthy, Davis would certainly have benefited from more time at Triple A. The Mets feel some level of commitment to Murphy at first base and Davis is still raw, improving on his talents and as this blog has already mentioned, expectations need to be tempered. But with a choice of Fernando Tatis or Jacobs, it seemed like an excellent opportunity for Davis to take over at first base. Which bears the question: did that much change 12 games into the season that made Davis unworthy of an opening day roster spot but worthy of one now? Did Davis really improve that much over the course of 2 weeks? Did Minaya really think that Jacobs was going to be the answer when so many baseball analyst and Met fans around the country knew otherwise? Under the circumstances with Murphy injured, there was no reason not to roll the dice with Davis.

But a larger decision is looming ahead for Minaya: what to do with John Maine? I wrote last week about how Maine has lost himself; he is no longer the pitcher he was when he first came to the Mets. Right now, he appears to be damaged goods, both physically and mentally. Relatively speaking, Maine had a better performance on Sunday against the Cardinals than his previous outings. He gave up 3 earned runs in 5 innings but labored to get that far into the game throwing 115 pitches. To his credit, he did change his approach throwing 73% fastballs and 21.7% change ups. This was a departure from the outing before when he was rocked by the Rockies. In that game, Maine threw 48% fastballs, 36% sliders and the change up 16% of the time.

But the problem with primarily throwing fastballs is that Maine doesn’t have the velocity anymore to throw the ball past the hitter. Only once did a batter swing and miss his fastball on Sunday. Take a look at this very reveling chart from BrooksBaseball.net that graphs Maine’s velocity pitch by pitch through the course of his performance on Sunday.

The spikes hitting the top of the chart would presumably be Maine’s fastball. The downward trend from the start of the game when he was hitting close to 92 mph compared to after 20 pitches is evident. From that point on his fastball was never able to reach the 90 mph level on any consistent basis. Because of this lack of velocity, Maine has a susceptibility to high pitch counts because he has to somehow craft his approach to batters using hittable fastballs and then work his change up into the pitch sequence to throw the batters timing off. Because of the lack of velocity on the fastball, the disparity of speed between Maine’s change up and his fastball is less, so the hitters don’t have to make as much of a timing adjustment between the two pitches. Good hitters will be able to foul off an 88 mph fastball all day long until eventually they find a pitch they can drive, so Maine’s pitch count will always be an issue.

Maine will probably make his next start mostly due to the fact that there aren’t any better options at this point. His modest improvement on Sunday, arguably earned him another opportunity. And yes, there are a lot of reasons to root for Maine. You can tell he wants the ball. You can tell he wants to compete. But there’s a difference between desire and actual results.

Which brings us back to Minaya. It would be one thing to send Maine out there start after start if his stuff was good and he was just throwing that one bad pitch or if there was even a glimmer that he was improving. But this isn’t happening and probably won’t. Minaya needs to realize the state of Maine. Minaya needs to stop making decisions based upon potential but rather make decisions based upon facts. In this case, the decision to remove Maine from the rotation is inevitable and Minaya needs to act upon that. The more he delays, procrastinates and looks at a player’s potential rather than his results, the more it will negatively impact the Mets and put Jerry Manuel and his own position in jeopardy.

Tough decisions are ahead. It’s time for Minaya to make them.