He’s had three good starts in a row, but overall he’s walking far too many batters this year. Doesn’t really have an out pitch either.

Granted, he’s probably not THIS good, but thats two starts in a row without walking anyone. He doesn’t need an offspeed “out pitch” because he’s more effectively using his off speed offerings (slider, curve and change) to set up his fastball. His fastball is just an effective put away pitch when he’s at least making people think off-speed.

He’s still needs work to become top echelon, but is rounding into at least a back of the rotation starter.

His last two wins were against teams that right now are just not that good. His start against St. Louis cannot be minimized, but I think the last two are a bit unrealistic in terms of indicating future performance. That being said, now that he is locating his fastball much better, it is making his other stuff more powerful. He is not walking as many hitters and he is getting more swings and misses. He is also getting a tremendous number of ground balls. I think he recorded like 12 or 13 outs on the ground before his first fly out. Moreover, when he has allowed hits, very few have been hard. I think he has gone over 60 innings without allowing a HR. Even when he does allow hits, he is getting the double play ball. Is he Brandon Webb? No. However, he can be a solid #2/#3 guy for a long time if he can improve against lefties. Anytime you have a guy who forces ground balls you are going to have a lot of hits because those balls find holes at times, but he is definitely someone to watch

He is throwing his fb with confidence; which I like.

I still don’t think his secondary pitches are anything worth talking about. Hopefully he can keep improving on them. He sure does have a nice fb though.

The truth is he doesn’t need any secondary pitches. The improvment came when he stopped trying to learn new pitches and just threw both fastballs. The main thing he needed was improved command of the sinker.

When he went back to pitching off the four-seamer is when he started to improve. Then came improving command of the sinker and using that as his swing and miss pitch. Nearly all of his improvment came not from working on his secondary pitches, but working on his best pitch, the sinker (two-seam fastball). He’s getting better movement on it and commanding it to both sides of the plate. He needs to use the four-seamer to set it up so guys can’t sit on it.

Here is Pelfreys line for those past 9 starts

H9: 8.14
BB9: 2.86
SO9: 6.18
RA9: 2.26

What it comes down to is, he really didn’t need to strike more guys out to be a good #2/#3; the quickest road to that improvement was simply to walk less. With his low HR rate, an SO9 of 6.00 is enough to be a #2. So he didn’t need to develop a swing and miss breaking ball. He needed to pound the strikezone with his fastball.

A line such as the following is sustainable long term for Pelfrey:

BB9: 2.5
SO9: 6.0
HR9: 0.7
FIP: 3.71

I am assuming just a bit more improvement in the walk rate, but also a regression in the HR rate to well above his career average; I do think a HR9 of 0.7 at most is sustainable with Pelfrey’s stuff. That may even be conservative; if he keeps it at 0.5, that FIP becomes 3.42.

many good pitches do Wang or Carmona throw?

Pelfrey’s slider isn’t a horrible pitch.. Because of how dominant his 4 and 2 seam fastballs are he doesn’t need to rely heavily on an off-speed pitch.. Though last night, Pelfrey flashed several good sliders which didn’t have a huge break, but had late movement, and at 4-6 MPH less than his fastball, had hitters off-balance.

He’s made fools out of Holliday and Pujols in his last 3 starts.. The inside 2-seamer is def a strikeout pitch.

The problem with evaluating Pelfrey remains the same one thats always existed. He had such lofty expectations that ran into problems when he couldn’t develop an off-speed offering that was above average. Therefore, until he created the above-average off-speed offering, he couldn’t be a good pitcher. That’s not entirely true (though it would help). Just two average off-speed offerings (now using curve, change and slider) would immensely increase the value of his two above-average fastballs (huge moving 2 seamer and 94-96 mph 4 seamer).

End result – his status and inability to have the dominating breaking ball will continue to harness doubters until he can do this for a full year, beginning to end. The reticence in believing is warranting, but denying that he’s making progress is foolhardy. He may never be the #1 starter imagined on draft day, but if he could fit in the middle of the rotation, then that would be super. He doesn’t need the crazy good breaking ball to be a #3 starter.

Pelfrey was named NL Player of the Week today. In two starts, Pelfrey fired 15 shutout innings while striking out ten and walking none.

I see Mike Pelfrey as a low-to-mid-fours ERA type of guy, although he may have the potential for better. But while I expect him to fall back before the season ends, I don’t see that regression in sight soon.