My gut feeling going into this season is that Mike Pelfrey is going to hurdle over the 15 win mark and win around 17 games. Is that a giant leap? Going by what he did last season in winning 15, with a mid three ERA, I don't see it as that far fetched.
He has shown the propensity to go deep into games, and the deeper you go into games, the better chance you have to be victorious. Manager Terry Collins is a push the envelope type of guy, with his take the extra base mentality. I feel like that translates over the pitching staff and he will lean on his big horse in "Big Pelf", to close out some games this season. The development of his Splitter is the biggest addition to his repertoire and, if he uses it properly, he will miss more bats and have less base runners. He also went through some major adversity during the middle of last season, which will help him grow as a player and as a person.
Pelfrey has recently been named the number 1 starter, and in a leadership role, for the rest of this story, click here
There's a good chance you are correct, especially if Bay and Beltran return healthy
ReplyDeleteI think that with the added leadership role he's being asked to take at the top of the rotation, and having learned from both his red-hot start and his mid-season let-down, that 2011 is the season that Pelf establishes himself as a solid SP2 on the cusp of SP1- so 17 wins is just about in the "wheelhouse of possibility!"
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