MLB Trade Rumors passes along the announcement that The Red Sox have signed starting pitcher John Maine to a minor league contract.
Maine, now 30 years old, was once rated as the 54th best prospect in baseball by Baseball America back in 2004. His best major league season came in 2007 when he threw 191 innings for the New York Mets, posting a 3.91 ERA, 4.18 xFIP and 2.7 fWAR. However, starting in 2008, Maine began to run into shoulder problems and has only thrown 121 big league innings since.
Last season, Maine threw 46 innings for the Rockies Triple-A affiliate and posted a 5.98 FIP. Since his shoulder surgery in 2008, Maine hasn’t posted a BB/9 under 4.2 at any level.
With this signing, GM Ben Cherington continues to stockpile former major league arms that have run into their share of difficulties in recent years (Padilla, Cook, Silva). Clearly, he does not want to rely on the arms in the farm system should the need arise as it did late last summer.
As for Maine, yes he was once a top prospect and showed promise at the big league level, but Sox fans shouldn’t be expecting much in 2012. On top of his history of shoulder problems, his production has not returned to it’s previous levels. Maybe he’ll enter 2012 healthy and surprise us all.
Maybe, but I doubt it.