{"id":704,"date":"2011-02-25T09:56:26","date_gmt":"2011-02-25T14:56:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=704"},"modified":"2013-01-31T15:27:46","modified_gmt":"2013-01-31T20:27:46","slug":"what-about-maya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=704","title":{"rendered":"What about Maya?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Maya in his first start for the P-Nats. Photo William Yoder\/thenatsblog.com<\/p><\/div>\n

I like to think i’m reading just about every bit of Washington Nationals news there is to be had during Spring Training.\u00a0 I follow all the beat writers I know of plus try to read just about every columnnist or blogger that I know to be down in Viera.\u00a0 But nobody is talking about Yunesky Maya<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

We know, for example, that John Lannan<\/strong> bulked up over the off season, that Livan<\/strong> shot a 65 and plans on playing in the Senior Golf tour when he turns 50, that Marquis<\/strong> feels better, that Detwiler<\/strong> has new mechanics, that Wang<\/strong> is healthy and that Zimmermann<\/strong> is rearing to go.\u00a0 But what about Maya?<\/p>\n

Last we had heard, Maya had gone down to the Dominican Winter League (DWL), played for Leones del Escogido and pitched well.\u00a0 Baseball America’s Lacy Lusk<\/strong> wrote a rather promising report<\/a> in December (insider only, sorry), and Maya was named the league’s best pitcher<\/a> at the Winter’s end.\u00a0 He finished the DWL 4-2 with a 1.32era<\/a>, striking out 42 batters in 41 innings pitched.\u00a0 And according to reports<\/a> he had his fastball up to 93mph.\u00a0 Now, the DWL may be the “best” of the winter leagues but its talent level has dipped significantly over the past 10 years.\u00a0 At best, i’d say its a AAA-level quality league.\u00a0 So take the stats with a slight grain of salt.<\/p>\n

This slight uptick in speed is important.\u00a0 In my review of Maya’s first four starts<\/a> (posted here last September) he was barely breaking 90, sitting in the 88-89 range and relying more on nibbling than going after hitters.\u00a0 I feel the uptick in velocity is clearly a result of gaining arm strength over the course of throwing innings, indicating that he was rushed to the Majors last September.\u00a0 Rizzo<\/strong> has all but admitted the team screwed up by rushing Maya through the minors, and his results showed.<\/p>\n

However, if Maya can hump it up to 93 and combine it with the amazing arsenal of pitches he seems to have (in his MLB debut<\/a> he showed at least EIGHT different pitches), I think he can be a very dangerous pitcher in this league. Which is why the team risked an $8M contract on him.<\/p>\n

Now, what does this mean for the 2011 season?\u00a0 So far, its hard to tell; Ladson posted a biopic piece today<\/a> but I’ve yet to see any reports on how he looks during his mound sessions or how he’s throwing.\u00a0 Perhaps its a language barrier issue; he doesn’t really speak English so interviews are difficult unless the interviewer also speaks Spanish.<\/p>\n

I think he’s still bound for AAA to start the season, simply because he has options and certain guys (Gorzelanny in particular) do not.\u00a0 But he may be first in line when someone gets hit by the injury bug.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I like to think i’m reading just about every bit of Washington Nationals news there is to be had during Spring Training.\u00a0 I follow all the beat writers I know of plus try to read just about every columnnist or blogger that I know to be down in Viera.\u00a0 But nobody is talking about Yunesky […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[182,37,42,39,43,1481,41,129,51,883],"class_list":["post-704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlbpitching","tag-bill-ladson","tag-chien-ming-wang","tag-jason-marquis","tag-john-lannan","tag-jordan-zimmermann","tag-lacy-lusk","tag-livan-hernandez","tag-mike-rizzo","tag-ross-detwiler","tag-yunesky-maya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=704"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":711,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704\/revisions\/711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}