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Last night in a win over the Dodgers, Claudio Vargas allowed four runs on five hits while striking 
out two and walking one through 5.2 innings pitched.
He is 2–2 in four starts with the Mets, with a 4.50 ERA.
Willie Randolph, on Vargas, while speaking to reporters following last night’s win, said:
“Vargie did another nice job for us. You know, he made a couple mistakes, but he’s done exactly what we wanted him to do. It was a great pick up by Omar to add him to the staff. He’s experienced, he’s a cool customer.”
Yesterday, at his blog for Newsday, David Lennon wrote that, when Pedro Martinez returns next week, the Mets may keep Mike Pelfrey in the rotation and move Vargas to long relief.
…i worry, because vargas seems to pitch to contact…which, as a reliever, could be a problem…we’ll see…i guess if he is used as a long reliever, it could work…
By the way, in Pelfrey’s last seven starts, the Mets are 0–7, during which he is 0–6 with a 6.70 ERA while allowing - get this - 73 base runners in 36 innings pitched.
…added to by Brandon Eddy…
…i totally agree, matt…vargas is better suited to remain in the rotation…i would love to see what pelfrey can give us out of the bullpen…i believe his stuff is better suited for 1-2 innings right now…you never know, maybe being a reliever is his calling…
read: Pelfrey’s not ready to be a Major League starter
Pelfrey should be in the bullpen. He can get them out for one or two innings then he loses it. The Mets have nothing to lose trying Pelfrey in the pen and everything to gain. Willie give it a try.
Send Pelfrey down, he’s got the options and needs to work some things out. He’ll take it okay and know he needs to improve.
I agree with you that he has some stuff to work out. If i had to pick pelf or vargas to stay on the rotation..i would rather pick vargas. Ron was saying last night that if the mets send down pelf, it might do damage to him mentally to think he couldnt cut it up here and it might do more harm than good. Its just a shame we gotta lose muniz because i think the kid has done very well up here. We can only hope arron is on the rebound because if anybody should go down to work out a few kinks…its him.
Except that Heilman has a track record of Major League success that Pelfrey does not. And it’s far easier for a reliever to “work out the kinks” at the Major League level than it is for a starter.
Jeez — can’t we get a starter with some mettle?
Oh yeah — we have one. He just cost $120M. . . .
Team Wins > Pelf’s Confidence
And where would all this shuffling leave Muniz?
oh… back in AAA
yea crazy, i like muniz and pelf obv isnt good or isnt ready. junk him.
it is that he isn’t ready. after watching his past five starts including the one hitter and his previous start it seems that he’s like maine in 06. he needs to get one more year and then he’ll be fine. remember last game where if reyes makes that play two runs are off the board and if beltran doesn’t play so deep against gonz (beltran i love you but this is the 08 version of gonz, not the 01) then that’s five runs off the board! also the start before the one hitter was quite good but the offense couldn’t help him out.
while he doesn’t look like he belongs up here i still think his future is bright. vargas has earned his shot at sticking with us and if he fails then we just go to pelfrey again or freddy garcia.
He is not comparable to Maine of 06. Maine put up a 3.60 ERA in his time in the big leagues that year and had a .225 BAA and struck out a good amount of hitters. Pelfrey has a .325 BAA, an ERA over 5 and can’t strike anybody out. There is no comparison.
exactly maine was reliable, he even had a complete game in there (which may have been a shutout i believe)
If “if’s” and “buts” were candy and nuts..
Willie said in the postgame last night that he wanted Muniz to pitch two maybe three innings (when it was still 6-0) That sounds like he is only up here to give the guys some rest and go back down. If he had pitched a three inning save he would likely be headed to NO right now.
Why oh why keep Pelfrey in the rotation? Vargas isn’t Tom Seaver, but at least he keeps you in the game. Pelfrey, not so much.
I think people may be reading too much into the fact that Pedro is returning on the day Vargas is scheduled to pitch. I’m sure that has more to do with Pedro’s timetable than it does with who he is replacing. They could easily have Pedro take Vargas’s turn on Tuesday and then push Vargas back two days to take Pelfrey’s turn on Thursday.
Remember, it was supposedly a done deal that Tatis was making the 25-man roster out of camp and that Smith was going to get sent down a couple weeks ago so we could keep Sosa, and neither of those things actually happened.
yes, it makes sense to have a veteran starter capable of relieving Pedro at any moment. If Vargas isnt needed in long relief then he starts two days later on Pelfrey’s day.
If Pedro get re-injured and Vargas pitches in long relief, then they recall Pelfrey and he pitches on when he would have anyway.
btw, Adam Bostick had season ending knee surgery two days ago. Brady Clark had the same a few days earlier.
are you saying boo or boo-urns?
seriously, sans one inning Vargas was great last night, Sans one inning per start Pelfrey allows two base runners per inning.
I mean we coulda swept the Marlins and really been on fire (and of course 2 games closer to 1st) had Pelfrey not thrown another stinker on Monday.
yes, at a time like this, when each win counts this early on, we can’t be experimenting and hoping pelf decides to have some form of confidence out there. he needs to be in AAA for the rest of the season, provided we dont desperately need him because of injuries. hes young, let him grow or gain stock down in the minors and get sumthing for him.
I was saying boo-urns
Well if Pelfrey stays in the rotation they will need a long reliever… makes perfect sense…
Keep Vargas, send Pelfrey back down to work on his secondary pitches. Forget that stupid sinker crap, Pelfrey is phenomenal when he’s pounding the top of the strike zone, like Maine. His fastball is crazy, but it needs complementary pitches.
I would like to see Freddy Garcia end up on our rotation late in the year, while pelfrey does another 100-150 innings in the minors
Odds that Freddy Garcia would get injured within minutes after the Mets sign him are 6 to 1.
i heard garcia is waiting tables now at a diner
Pelf should get one-two more turns in the rotation to see if he can gain some traction/confidence and get better. So far he has sucked, so his chances should be only based on a dramatic turnaround. Kind of a shame to contemplate discarding such a young guy, but let’s also face facts.
Vargas, conversely, inspires some degree of confidence.
With a unknown level of health and ability to rebound on regular rest regarding Pedro, it may make sense for the Mets to have six starters on the roster. Santana, Maine, and Perez would stay on turn; Pedro would pitch when Pedro wants to pitch; and Pelfrey and Vargas would fill in the blanks and pitch in long relief otherwise. Its not ideal, but unless we can trade for Tim Wakefield, I cant think of a better way to manage Pedro’s limited abilities. Well you could replace Pelfrey with Figeuroa, as Figgy might be a little better suited for the back and forth.
anyone else really excited that pedro is coming back after this series? i think it’s exactly the right time, especially if we get on a bit of a roll here….his energy and leadership will definately help this club out.
I’m with you .. I’m trying to keep expectations down, and the Mets clearly are too, but if he comes back and pitches well, that could very well put us over the top.
One factor to keep in mind here is that Peflrey only has one option year remaining. If they keep him on the 25 man roster all year then they could option him next year.
I realize winning games right now is most important, but I would hate to option Peflrey, then call him back a week later when Pedro gets injured again.
I do believe that Pelfrey should be in the pen, as much as I’d like to see him succeed as a starter. That being said, he’s been fairly unlucky.
He pitched well in April, 2-1 with a 4.43 ERA. May has been an up and down month for him. He had those two starts where the he gave up 3 runs, and got a total of 1 run of support. He had that bad start in Arizona. Then, in his last two starts, he’s been victimized by some shoddy defense(Luis Castillo against Atlanta, Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran against Florida). Not making excuses, cause he needs to learn how to pitch out of trouble, but the defense behind him hasnt helped.
It would also help if he would stop going 3-0 on every single freaking hitter.
Like I said, he hasnt been perfect. But he hasnt exactly been helped out either.
Pelfrey seems to be a Victor Zambrano clone at this point in his career. Pitchers who can’t consistently throw strikes end up lullining their defense behind them to sleep. It takes all flow out of the game. There was a reason that even when Zambrano was pitching well in 2005, he never got wins because his team just couldn’t play behind a guy who couldn’t keep the game moving.
Compare that to Santana or even Vargas, who just attack hitters. They’ll give up runs, but usually the offense and defense is ready to play better behind them. Same could be said for Maine when he’s on.
I know, given the free agency/retirement of Pedro, Duque and Olllie that it’s important for Pelfrey to prove he can be a major league starter, but for a team that’s struggling, I’m afraid Pelfrey can only be shoved down our throats so much. Vargas is not a world beater, but at this point I think he in the rotation and Muniz in the bullpen give us a better chance of winning than Pelfrey in the rotation and Vargas the “long man” getting the Aaron Sele treatment. It’s not like Pelfrey has proven he can dominate the minor leagues, or AAA yet either. So the idea that he can only “learn” on the big league level is absurd.
At the end of the day, all of Pelfrey’s issues stem from his lousy control. I’d rather he work on learning how to spot his sinker on the corners and throw his change-up more consistently in AAA. He’s not going to learn how to do that pitching to a 6 ERA in the big leagues.
Is it nearly time to start thinking about Pelfrey as a relief pitcher?
I would love to see what Pelfrey can give us in New Orleans.
He’s not going to do any better in the bullpen because he doesn’t throw enough quality strikes, and lacks an true “punch out” pitch. Yes he throws relatively hard, but he constantly finds the fat part of opponents bats.
I think he needs to go to Norfolk and try and work on some things. At the end of the day, I think he’s been completely over-valued and is probably a back of the rotation/middle reliever guy on a lower-tier team. That’s MHO, anyway.
A true punch out pitch is the only thning he actually has, when he has copntrol of it. He does not have any other effective pitches. LOTS OF HIGH FIRST ROUNDERS NEVER MAKE IT. EVER! You don’t ruin two straight seasons to have a guy with 1 pitch and no control lose 6 and 7 seven games in a row for you. He was supposed to be polished , a guy who could help nearly right away. His stuff translates to relief so heres my prediction. Omar keeps him up long enough to lose 2 or 3 straight. He finally gets sent down where he gets beat up by AAA hitters just like last year. Omar trades him at the deadline as a project, getting a player like Ben Johnson in rreturn, who we’ll cut in the offseason. The recieving team will prompty move his wicked fastballs to the pen, with a fresh start and renewed focus he becomes one of the better set up guys in the game. I know some guys take longer to develop. I know we have rotation spots to fill next year. That doesn’t change the fact that we are once again jamming a square peg into a round hole, and killing Pelfs trade value while we’re at it
why state “Nice Job, Vargie, Enjoy the Bullpen”?
The decision is not final. And we are all reacting to a Lennon blog entry from yesterday about something that MAY happen. Plus it was posted prior to Vargas giving us a pretty strong effort yesterday, and 2 consecutive winnign outings.
GIve Willie/Omar/Peterson some time to think this one over. Becasue we all know the proper move is to keep Vargas in the rotation, and let Pelf ‘Clear his head’ at Patty O’Briens.
looks like we’re getting pretty close to Pelfrey turning into Aaron Heilman 2.0: highly touted first round draft pick struggles as a starter, eventually becomes a reliever. Hopefully Pelf won’t give up any Game 7-losing extra inning homeruns to a Molina brother…
In ‘07–in NO–Pelfrey was 3-6 with a 4.01 and a 1.71 WHIP. His pitching didn’t even warrant being called up last year at all. Pelfrey has been riding his “potential” and for a long time now, has developed slowly if it all, and hasn’t backed up the hype with performance.
Most top level prospects are called up after dominating in the minors. With Pelfrey there was no real evidence that he was ready for the bigs.
The Mets need to send him down. With only one pitch, he’s not a credible starter. There are two spots available among Pelfrey, Vargas, and Muniz. You can’t send Vargas down without losing him on waivers, and it’s a good bet that Muniz can pitch better than Pelfrey’s 5.33 ERA, 1.78 WHIP.
100% agree. I’ve been a big Omar supporter but his ego is starting to get to me a little bit. Pelfrey showed nothing that would indicate he’s ready for the majors while in our system. He’s the only high draft pick Omar has had during his tenure and he refuses to believe he messed up and that this guy is a set up guy at best, and even for that he needs more work in the minors. FK U Omar! If Willie can make adjustments so can you. You could argue we may have never missed the playoffs sans Pelfs 0-7 start to last year