Revisiting Mike Pelfrey

I wrote a fairly negative piece about Mike Pelfrey back in February where my conclusion was to pay very little for him.

So far, Mike Pelfrey has made me look like an idiot. He's 3-0 with a 0.86 ERA and even has a save to his credit.

Obviously, Pelfrey's not going to throw up a sub-1 ERA this year. He has 90.5% strand rate, a 2.65 FIP, a 3.88 xFIP and a .231 BABIP. However, given what he's done and how he looks so far, it is time to reassess Pelfrey's value. I'm positive that Dan Warthen isn't reading my blog, but it does seem like the Mets took some of my criticisms to heart.

My biggest one is how much he uses his fastball. Among qualifiers, he threw a higher percentage of fastballs than any pitcher in the bigs last year (Rick Porcello was a close second). With an average speed of 92.6 MPH, it's not like Pelfrey is throwing meatballs up there, but there isn't enough movement or deception to the pitch to make it a punch-out pitch. In other words, this isn't Nolan Ryan or Randy Johnson in his prime. I think that Pelfrey needs to refine/trust his secondary offerings and start throwing them more.

So far, so good. Pelfrey's fastball percentage has dropped from 78.3% to 68.2%. He's mixing in more change-ups (up from 4.2% to 9.9%) and has even added a splitter. Pelfrey still doesn't have dominating stuff, but is providing hitters with more looks and thus making his stuff harder to hit.

A look at the PitchFx from his last start against the Cubs backs this up. He threw 102 pitches and only 65 were fastballs. That might sound like a lot, but compare that to last year when he was throwing nothing but heat. 

If Pelfrey can maintan the confidence in his off-speed offerings, he has enough stuff to be a solid #2 or #3. He won't continue to pitch this well, but something between a 3.50 and a 4.00 isn't out of the question.