Maness, 28, completed three sets of throws at a distance of 90 feet on Friday in the John Burroughs School gymnasium. He is scheduled to take the mound next week for the first time since his Aug. 18 surgery. He has been encouraged by how his arm feels at every stride in his rehab, which is accelerated from the usual Tommy John timetable. The Cardinals did not offer him a contract in early December, making him a free agent — one of the leading groundball relievers now available to any team. Sooner than expected.

The surgery Maness had, called “primary repair,” doesn’t have the sexy name. It doesn’t have the brand recognition of Tommy John. But it also doesn’t have the lengthy recovery time of its famous forefather. It is a repair and buttressing of the existing ligament at the bone, not Tommy John’s reconstruction of the ligament. The scar Maness has on the inside of his right elbow is the familiar arc of a Tommy John recipient. (Two of the Cardinals’ five starting pitchers have the same scar.) And the medical code assigned by Major League Baseball to Maness’ profile for interested teams is the same as Tommy John. As a result, so are the assumptions about the righthander’s availability for 2017. The surgery he had is too new to have its own code.

“It has that potential to be big,” Paletta said.