Aside from last night’s two home run evenings by Jeff Francouer and Rod Barajas, Mike Pelfrey’s performance was the best news. Lets go inside his numbers.
1. 94 pitches in 6 innings, with 57 strikes. That’s around 61%. Considered another way, 6 or every 10 pitches were strikes. Pretty good.
2. 16 of 26 first pitch strikes. That’s about 62%. Or again 6 out of every ten. So more simply said, 16 out of 26 Nats saw a strike first pitch. I’d like 70% or higher, but I’ll take it as Pelfrey will get ground balls.
3. ESPN provides an interesting stat on strikes: Called strikes-Swinging strikes-Foul balls-In Play strikes. Pelfrey was 21-5-14-17. To be candid, I’m not sure what to do with this stat except to say that it’s indicative of the Nats’ scouting report. They wanted to make Pelfrey throw strikes. They only took 5 called strikes in 6 innings.
4. But 6 innings is an inning too short. For the Mets to be successful, they will need Pelfrey to be more of an innings eater. If they have a six run lead, he needs able to keep the bullpen in their jackets by being more economical with his pitches. If he shows NL advance scouts that he continues to throw a significant number of first pitch strikes, it can get Pelfrey much more consistently into the 7th and 8th innings.
5. The 4 Walks: He’s been pretty good over the past two seasons in that he’s averaging about 3 per nine innings. But as he’s been giving up a hit per inning or work, it will be indicative of a pitcher who will not be able to get more innings of work. This is the downside to the previously mentioned upside.
6. Outlook: Pelfrey’s starting to compare favoribly with former Mets Ron Darling and Walt Terrell, although he’s been giving up more hits than did either of the two. If Pelfrey shows that he will be around the strike zone more consistently early in the count, he’ll get more contact earlier. This will get his pitch counts and base hits numbers down.
On another note, another very good job by the Mets bullpen (Takahashi, Nieve and Mejia). All the outs over three innings of work were ground balls outs or strike outs. No hits either. But lets not wear them out like we did last year. We need Pelfrey and Jon Niese to consistently get further into to the games we’re winning.
