The Pelfrey Shirt

When I bought my Mike Pelfrey shirt to wear to the Subway Series game at Yankee Stadium, Big Pelf was 9-1 with an ERA of 2.39.

Since I got my shirt, Pelfrey is 1-4 with a 9.11 ERA.

Maybe I need to bury the shirt underneath the new Yankee Stadium, where it all began.

Or maybe I can bury it with the Mets' playoff chances, which are rapidly diminishing.

I love it how people who have been demanding that the Mets add a pitcher when the rotation was doing well only increase the demand when things start to fall apart. As if trading for a Jake Westbrook is going to make up for Pelfrey's collapse.

The Mets' primary pitching need is to figure out what is wrong with Pelfrey.

Other organizations have pitching gurus at the major league level as well as in the minors. The Tigers sent down Max Scherzer, Armando Galarraga and Rick Porcello. All have returned with improved results.

Dan Warthen must be doing something right, considering how good the starting pitching has been much of the year, but he doesn't seem to have the answers when things go wrong.

Unless Pelfrey has an injury, which we'll never knew for sure the way Jerry Manuel continues to be in denial on injuries.

Last night, Pelfrey gave up six runs in just 1 2/3 innings. Here's how bad he was - that was a worse start than any of Oliver Perez' this year.

On Sunday, I wrote that Ruben Tejada had done the impossible - make Luis Castillo look like an upgrade, at least at the plate.

I hope Pelfrey never makes Ollie look like an upgrade, but he has done something almost as impossible - make a potential Ollie start less scary. Ollie can't do any worse than last night's debacle. At least I hope not.