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July 27, 2013 Mets 2013 Games Joe Janish

Mets Game 99: Win Over Nationals

Mets 11 Nationals 0

Mets win a laugher as Jenrry Mejia throws seven scoreless in his return to the big leagues.

Mets Game Notes

Due to being at work, I missed this afternoon ballgame. I did, however, watch a few frames of Mejia to see his mechanics. Based on my memory — which is not necessarily reliable — it looks like there were no changes made (again) to his dangerous motion. He still starts his momentum sideways, which puts his body off-balance immediately and causes his front shoulder to fly open prematurely in the body’s innate “correction” necessary to hurl the ball toward home plate. Additionally, he’s still “carrying” the ball behind his back as he comes out of the leg lift and begins driving toward the plate. Because of that “carry,” his throwing hand is a beat or two behind when his front foot strikes the ground. So, there will still be significant stress put on his shoulder and elbow. From the boxscore, it appears his performance was very good to outstanding. However, the process was flawed, and we can expect to see him re-injure his arm in due course.

Joe Janish began MetsToday in 2005 to provide the unique perspective of a high-level player and coach -- he earned NCAA D-1 All-American honors as a catcher and coached several players who went on to play pro ball. As a result his posts often include mechanical evaluations, scout-like analysis, and opinions that go beyond the numbers. Follow Joe's baseball tips on Twitter at @onbaseball and at the On Baseball Google Plus page.
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  1. Gabriel Peña July 27, 2013 at 7:01 am
    Hi Joe. Mejia has some bone spurs and will need surgery after the season. So what’s the plan keep pitching until he can’t pitch anymore? Aren’t the bone spurs painfull? Will that situation change his mechanics? Will that put more pressure on the shoulder?
  2. Izzy July 27, 2013 at 7:29 am
    I will certainly trust your judgement on his mechanics but in this start he showed he has a lot more stuff than Wheeler has. His ball was moving all over the place. Maybe he will get lucky and not blow the arm out. Others have horrid approaches and last, others smoothe and go down Fotolife TJ. This love affair with 95 plus mph is not necessarily good for most. Very few Ryan’s but a lot of Leary’s.
  3. crozier July 27, 2013 at 11:58 am
    If Mejia pitches half-decently the rest of the way, he brings a huge lift to the team. By employing a 6-man rotation the rest of the year, it allows the club to continue pitching Harvey and Wheeler through September, as well as shutting down Niese if that becomes the best course to take.

    But I also wonder how much leverage it gives Alderson to explore a package deal before deadline. It probably doesn’t, but you never know.

    It would be nice to say something positive about Ike’s 3-run shot – but all I thought was, “least significant 3-run home run in the history of the club.”

    With the score 11-0, I texted a friend to say, “You know they aren’t scoring s#** for Harvey tonight.” Wish I’d been wrong about that.

  4. Scottie July 27, 2013 at 1:20 pm
    His mechanics aren’t great, but in terms of “stuff”, that was the best I’ve seen from a non-Harvey Met I can remember. The slider and changeup were moving all over the place. Maybe he can become the dominating closer Manual envisioned after all?
  5. argonbunnies July 27, 2013 at 4:54 pm
    He looked great. I’m the first to downplay the success of a Met who just got lucky; that was not Jenrry. Exceptional movement on everything, almost no hard contact, threw strikes early and got hitters chasing late.

    I’ve yet to hear a verdict on what his offspeed pitches were. He threw pitches moving down and away, straight down, and down and in. Slider, splitter, change-up? Or just different variations on two of those? Was one a hard curve? Whatever, they were all nasty.

    Fastball stayed 93-94 with cut and sink. Much more consistent from pitch to pitch than I’ve ever seen Mejia. Not Rivera, but maybe close to Kenley Jansen.