Mike Pelfrey

Who would have thought that the New York Mets pitching staff would be the strongest part of the team, while the hitting staff would be the weakest?

Saturday, April 17 against the St. Louis Cardinals, the Mets hitting staff was shut down until the top of the 19th inning when Jose Reyes scored a run on a sacrifice fly against a position player converted to pitcher during the game. All regular relievers were already used up in the Cardinals bullpen, and the only pitchers available were starters.

After an Opening Day victory against the Florida Marlins, the Mets dropped the following two games to start the season 1-2.

With the exception of last night, the team showed that it is capable of scoring runs. The preseason idea that the Mets will remain in a lot of games if their pitching is at least serviceable appears to be holding true.

With that in mind, the Mets will turn to essentially their No. 2 and No. 3 starters Friday and Saturday for the first two games against the Washington Nationals.

BY MICHAEL GANCI
EDITOR

Today, the Mets will start a series of epic proportions against their biggest rival, the Philadelphia Phillies. The Mets will be going into the bandbox of a stadium and there will be no smiles unless the Mets come out on top. In order to do so, they are going to need big performances from their big-time players, including Jose Reyes and David Wright, both of whom are in big slumps at the moment.

This all starts with Mike Pelfrey's tendinitis.

The Mets decided to skip his start to rest the arm, which I thought was a smart move, but from there, I'm not sure about how they've gone about dealing with this situation.

Mike Pelfrey, like Jose Reyes and David Wright, is a product of the Mets farm team system, which sets him apart from the other starting pitchers in the rotation. Johan Santana is from the Minnesota Twins, Oliver Perez is from the San Diego Padres, and John Maine is from the Baltimore Orioles. 

Who the No 5 pitcher will be is yet to be determined, but at this point most likely will either be Livian Hernandez or Freddy Garcia, as Tim Redding has been shut down and will not be on the active 25 man roster going into Opening Day.