Lack of love for Mike Pelfrey?

[Sekrah]

What in the heck am I missing here. This guy is only owned in 50% of the Yahoo leagues?

Pelfrey just turned 25 years old and is coming off a season with a 3.96 FIP. He does have a lousy K/9 rate which looks to settle around 5.50-6.00, but he also has great HR/9 at 0.54 last season.

Among the Mets main 4 starters last season, Pelfrey had the highest BABIP of .302 vs Santana's .287, Maine and Perez .280.

In 2007, he carried a BABIP of .331, while everyone else was around .285-.292

As far as his repretoire of pitches, last season he decided to stray away from his slider which he had trouble commanding and stuck primarily with a real hard four-seam fastball (95-97mph) and a two-seamer (93-95mph) that has wicked sink! He was keeping the ball in the park and hitters were having trouble getting the sweet spot of the bat on these pitches.

This offseason he's been working on a "Greg Maddux"-type sinker and has had some great outings in preseason with it (except for the last one).

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03202009/sp ... 160438.htm

"If he can do that consistently," a scout in attendance said of using the varied stuff, "he wins 18 this year. He is just getting better and better, in part because he realizes he does not have to blow everyone away."


Or is it just "in the cards" that he's due for a breakdown after a big workload jump in 2008?

[Crazed98]

He's has potential to be a great pitcher but still somewhat raw and unproven. Plus he won't strikeout batters a whole lot. In real life he's ideally the Mets #2 starter but for fantasy purposes he would be #4 behind Maine and O perez.

[kab21]

He should probably be owned in more leagues but his lack of love is due to his lack of K's (which you mentioned). If he hits the optimistic projections then he's a Buerhle or Wang level pitcher. At the end of draft I might be considering higher upside guys since I can always find a lower upside guy on the waiver wire.

[George_Foreman]

Crappy K-rate, decent-but-not-great BB rate, and a HR rate lower than his minor league numbers would indicate. Maybe worth a late-round flier, but there are a TON of better options out there. Heck, I'd probably prefer Porcello or one of the Oakland rookies.

[Ender]

He had a 6.3 HR/FB% which probably isn't sustainable which is also why his FIP is so low since it ignores HRs (which is why it is such a flawed stat~).

The reason his BABIP is higher than the other pitchers is because he is a groundball pitcher and they are flyball guys. Groundball's produce a higher BABIP on average so most pitchers like Pelfrey are going to be higher than .300.

Personally I don't think Pelfrey is worth a roster spot even in my deep H2H league where there are 14 teams and most teams carry 7-8 starters. He isn't in the top 125 starters in my book.

[bigh0rt]

He's owned in all 6 of my leagues