Mea Culpa

By Metstradamus
Posted Friday, July 4, 2008

I learned a long time ago that it really doesn't matter how old you are, you're always learning until you die. Because just when you think you know everything, something always happens to make you look like an idiot. Trust me when I say that I know all about looking like an idiot.

A few weeks ago, I wrote that Mike Pelfrey needed to go down to the minor leagues. With the Mets putting their stock in so many older guys, and with Claudio Vargas performing while Pelfrey was struggling, my reasoning of "what's the big deal going with one more older guy when the team is stocked with them anyway" was supposedly sound.

But here's why Mike Pelfrey is at the top of his profession while I am at the bottom of mine: The day after my sound reasoning was published, Pelfrey gave up two runs and struck out six hitters to keep the Mets in a game they would wind up winning. And since my "brilliant" column was published, Pelfrey has gone from 2-6 to 6-6. He's pitched good games and got robbed of decisions, and has pitched mediocre games but hung in there while not wasting good run support. Last night, against the Cardinals, he did both in a game the Mets absolutely needed to have. Heck, he even drove in a run which turned a one-run inning into a six-run inning.

And now, we have come to the point where Met fans have more faith in Mike Pelfrey and his hard sinker than they have in Pedro Martinez and his erratic command of the strike zone. Yes, this is the world we live in now. It's wacky. It makes no sense except in the fact that once again, baseball has proven me dead wrong. So I take this opportunity to say the following to you, Mike Pelfrey:

My bad, sorry.

And no, I'm not under the false pretense that Mike Pelfrey is going to go on the plane from St. Louis to Philadelphia, find an online connection, and look up all of the columnists and bloggers who has ever said anything bad about him in the past and search and wait for the apologies to roll in. In fact, I'm sure that Pelfrey isn't Googling "Mike Pelfrey" and looking up all the blog entries written about him. And I'm damn sure that Mike Pelfrey has never heard of me. It's silly of me to think that he read what I wrote about him in late May, and I sincerely doubt he's reading this. But just in case Mike, it was nothing personal.

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And more proof that I'm not the most creative and imaginative person in the world is this: The above apology to Pelfrey is really only meant to mask the fact that I have the same feelings about the Phillies series that starts today than I did about the Yankee series that started one week ago today. So this week's column would look a lot like last week's column.

Well, except for one thing. Last week, the Mets should have won three of four. This week, the guarantees in the pitching matchups don't really extend beyond today, where if Johan Santana loses to J.A. Happ, then there's really no reason to ever watch baseball again. John Maine vs. Jamie Moyer ... Ollie Perez vs. Kyle Kendrick ... and Pedro Martinez vs. noted Met killer Adam Eaton are all dicey, except if the Mets hit at the rate they did in the last three games against St. Louis. So although I'd like three out of four, I'd settle for a split in Philadelphia. And really, in this season of winning about as many as they lose, should we really expect anything else?

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Metstradamus would like to wish you a happy fourth of July. Remember to light your fireworks safely. And if you have verbal fireworks, come share them on his blog.