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Pelfrey Has to Struggle, Making the Mets Happy; By BEN SHPIGEL, NY Times
Topic Started: Mar 15 2007, 12:09 AM (39 Views)
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LAKELAND, Fla., March 14 — Mike Pelfrey lost his fastball Wednesday somewhere among the orange groves and cattle farms that line the roads between here and Port St. Lucie. That would not have mattered to him six months ago. He would have thrown it anyway, defiant that his best pitch, even on a bad day, would be good enough.

The new Pelfrey — an older, more mature and, by everyone’s account, better pitcher — adjusted immediately. He turned to his improved secondary pitches because they were all he had. Facing his stiffest competition yet, Pelfrey allowed six hits and a run while pitching the final four innings of the Mets’ 2-0 loss to the Detroit Tigers at Joker Marchant Stadium.

Discussing Pelfrey’s performance, Manager Willie Randolph sounded as upbeat as he has all spring because, he said, Pelfrey was learning how to pitch. Recounting a conversation with the pitching coach Rick Peterson between innings, Pelfrey said he told him, “You know, I probably couldn’t have done that last year.”

As impressive as it would have been for Pelfrey to dominate hitters Wednesday, it is days like this that Randolph and his staff will recall as they begin paring the list of rotation candidates. Through the first month, Pelfrey and Chan Ho Park have emerged as the co-favorites for the No. 5 slot, with each offering evidence as to why the Mets should choose him.

In Park, the Mets have a veteran starter who could consume innings and give Pelfrey a little more time to refine his slider. In Pelfrey, the Mets see someone who could anchor the rotation for the next several years. As indicated by their selecting Brian Bannister as the fifth starter last season, the Mets are not afraid of challenging one of their young pitchers if they believe he is ready. Through nine spring innings, Pelfrey has allowed one earned run and one walk, while recording two strikeouts.

“There’s no question that you can see that Pelfrey has more composure when he pitches now,” General Manager Omar Minaya said. “The question is whether he is the best guy for the rotation when the time comes.”

That is what the next few weeks are for. The outings will get longer and the lineups tougher, meaning Pelfrey will have to mix up his pitch sequences even more. Pelfrey went 2-1 with a 5.48 earned run average in four starts with the Mets last season, but he got into trouble because he could not throw his off-speed pitches for strikes.

He scrapped his curveball during the off-season in favor of a sharp-breaking slider because it comes in looking like a fastball.

“I’ve said all along, last year I didn’t have the best result, but I left here knowing, hey, I could pitch at this level,” Pelfrey said. “The times I got in trouble were when the secondary stuff wasn’t there and I couldn’t command it. I feel like I went to work hard on it, and those pitches have worked better for me.”

On Wednesday, with one out, a runner on second and facing the dangerous Carlos Guillén, Pelfrey snapped off a two-strike slider that Guillén swung at early.

“It wasn’t my best slider, but it did want I wanted it to do,” Pelfrey said. “He took a good hack, thinking it was a fastball.”

Pelfrey saw another side of the slider, too. He had just induced a double-play grounder when he tried getting ahead of Marcus Thames with a first-pitch slider. Thames socked it onto the berm behind the left-field fence.

“Kids have a tendency to make mistakes every once in a while, but that’s a given,” Randolph said. “Every time he goes out, he gets better. I hope he does enough to make my decision tough at the end.”

Pelfrey will have these sorts of days again, and the Mets’ decision will hinge on where they would like him to figure things out: in the Pacific Coast League or the National League. Asked if pitching in New Orleans, the new home of the Mets’ Class AAA team, would be more glamorous than in Norfolk, Va., Pelfrey played it cool.

“Yeah, I heard the travel is worse there, but you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” he said. “It gives you an incentive to get to the big leagues.”


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