So John Maine could be shut down for the season . . . what if the Mets react by curtailing Mike Pelfrey’s workload during the stretch drive to avoid injury to him as well?

With El Duque facing surgery and Tom Seaver on his way back to Napa there’s no “terrific” solution. And most of the Mets young pitching options have the same issue of possible work-overload that Pelfrey has.

Pelfrey’s innings by season:

• 2004 College 115.1
• 2005 College 139.2
• 2006 Pros 124.1
• 2007 Pros 152.2
• 2008 so far 154

Five more starts x 6ip/per would bump Big Pelf to 184 ip before the first piece of playoff bunting was hung.

Jon Niese has already thrown 161.1 innings this season after only 133.2 last season. Bobby Parnell is up to 141 after 105.1 last season. Ideally each would finish their minor league season over the next week, declare victory and start resting for 2009.

Is there a way to avoid pushing those guys too hard without pinning our playoff hopes on the likes of Figgy & Stokes? There’s no easy fit here but one radical stop-gap might be to think about pairing hurlers as “Tandem Tossers.”

Basically you’d pair Pelfrey with either Niese or Parnell for one rotation slot and pair the other of Nielse/Parnell with Stokes for the Maine rotation slot. Start 1 Pelfrey would pitch the first four innings and Niese/Parnell the next 3, next time Pelfrey would hurl the first 3 innings and Niese/Parnell the next 4. Same split fo the other pairing.

Under no circumstances would they toss more innings in a given game and they’d only toss fewer innings if they were getting shelled and the game was still salvageable.

If it works and you get 7 innings out of your two starters, you need 6 outs from a leaky bullpen. And once we hit September 1 there’s plenty of roster space to accomodate four pitchers for two rotation slots.

This structure would mean each guy pitches 17-18 more innings instead of 30 - 6ip x 5 starts. Is this preferable to Stokes & Figueroa? Unless a miracle cure for bunion-itis is discovered ASAP those seem to be the only options.

(0 votes, average: 0 out of 5)

 Loading ...