A Month to Forget for Mike Pelfrey

July 2010 is not a month that Mike Pelfrey will recall fondly. He did not go to his first All-Star game. He did not win a game, losing three. His ERA for season rose from 2.93 to 4.10. He watched a potential 20-win season go by the wayside. The way things are going, he’ll be lucky to win 15.

If you told any Mets fan before the season that Pelfrey would win 15 games this year, they would have happily taken it. But the way he started the season now makes that a disappointment. He was looking like the legitimate number two starter the Mets desperately needed. He doesn’t look like that anymore.

It points out what a huge mistake Omar Minaya made by not obtaining a frontline starter in the off season, and that was magnified by his inability to land Cliff Lee, Roy Oswalt or Dan Haren over the past few weeks. R.A. Dickey is pitching like a number two right now, but as I’ve written in the past, how long will that last? Hopefully it lasts for the rest of the season, but who can tell?

According to the New York Post,  Minaya’s trade deadline strategy is to get a starter who is having a down year so he doesn’t have to give up any good prospects. That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Has Minaya thought for a moment that maybe those pitchers are having bad years because they are on the downside of their careers? The paper uses Guillermo Mota in 2006 as a successful  example of that strategy. That is not fair because, as we learned later, Mota only put up good numbers because he was on steroids.

The Mets cannot win with this pitching staff. We all knew that going into the season. Why didn’t Minaya?

*****

Oh, by the way, the Mets lost Friday night — a loss that can be blamed on a Jose Reyes error. It was a simple play, but the ball just skipped over his glove. Gee, who wrote the other day that something is not right with Reyes in the field?