Sunday, July 29, 2007
Pelfrey
Another start, another 6 IP, >100 pitches, 3 ER. The guy's consistency is unbelievable; except for Trachsel, I've never seen anyone have the same line every time they pitched. Somehow he's just got to have a break-out game one of these times and get through the hurdle. One thing that's surprising to me is his K rate is so low: roughly 5 Ks/9 IP. I thought he was more of a strikeout pitcher?
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2 comments:
His best pitch is a sinking 2 seamers, so I think the organization has always figured him to be more of a ground ball pitcher than a K pitcher at the ML level. The problem is, with his velocity and movement, I think he's had great success at the lower levels going after strikeouts, which is part of what is contributing to his high pitch counts.
Of course, 6 IP and 3 ER's is considered a "quality start", so if you really were getting that out of a pitcher every time you could probably live with it. The reality is in the beginning of the season he wasn't getting that deep into his starts, and was giving up more runs.
Pelf has made progress this year, there's no question. He's looked much more effective in his last 2 ML starts (despite the fact he's riding the N.O. express) than he did earlier in the year. I think his biggest problem remains confidence (as discussed earlier), and that his location and K/BB ratio will improve once he starts having some more faith in his arm-- and once he gets his first couple of wins under his belt. It would've been nice for the O to show up in one of these past few starts and give Pelf a little head start in one of these past couple of solid starts, but you could say the same for all our pitchers.
I'd hate to trade this kid now when his value is down (unless Omar manages to get real value for him--Texeira, Gagne, or some other no-brainer who's willing to stay in Flushing beyond this season). My guess is, if we move him, it'll be kind of like Izzy, a guy who goes on to have a good-to-excellent ML career that we just gave up on too fast.
I agree that Pelfrey's upside is almost certainly better than what he's showing now, so to trade him now would be a mistake (assuming his less-than-expected performance at MLB level has hurt his value). I hope he turns it around and has that breakthrough performance he desperately needs for his confidence..
Izzy is a good point, although he didn't really become solid until moved to closer position, and who knows if the Mets would have done that. Of course there's always Kazmir..
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