Help Us, Mike Pelfrey, You're Our Only Hope

It's coming up on game time so I'm going to keep this one brief (I'll be back with a post-game recap later this afternoon). Basically though, my reaction to yesterday's game is probably quite similar to yours.

You see, I'm sick of Victor Zambrano. I'm sick of his grimmace. I'm sick of his sad-sack, loser's demeanor. I'm sick of feeling that it would take a miracle for the Mets to win a game with him on the hill.

I'm especially sick of hearing broadcaster after broadcaster regurgitate this ridiculous conventional wisdom about how great his "stuff" is. I mean, if his stuff were half as good as these broadcasters make it out to be he wouldn't suck this bad, it wouldn't be possible.

I'm sick of thinking about Scott Kazmir, but I realize it's unavoidable whenever I see Zambrano. I'm sick of us running him out there for still another season because we're too embarrassed to cut our losses and admit that we got fleeced in that trade.

He had a good stretch in 2005, people say. He's got great upside. Whatever. Gary Cohen hit the nail on the head about Zambrano during last night's game. He called him out publicly, asking the question we've all been asking ourselves: when is it time to look at a guy and realize he just can't get it done?

Zambrano is 30 years old. He's been in the big leagues for 5 years. Every year he has the exact same problems.

They tell us he just needs to harness his stuff, that his stuff is too good to struggle. Is that supposed to mean something? Are we still supposed to be impressed with Zambrano because he won 12 games for the Devil Rays in 2003?

None of his stats have improved at all in his career -- he's the same pitcher now that he's always been. He can't be fixed; either we accept this guy for who he is and be happy about it, or we accept that he sucks and move on.

Am I taking last night's loss really, really hard? Yeah. But last night was embarrassing. We have the best record in baseball and yet we looked like we wanted no part of that game. For my money, it all started with the pitcher.

The team was riding sky-high going into the game. As my brother texted me last night about Zambrano, "This guy is such a buzz kill." It's the only word for it. I wanted to go to last night's game, but decided I wouldn't because Zambrano was on the mound. That's what it's come to.

So what can we do? Unfortunately we're not flush with options.

I don't want to see us move Aaron Heilman into the rotation; that would leave our bullpen too thin leading up to Billy Wagner.

We could try and trade Zambrano for a reliever, thereby giving us flexibility with Heilman, but I can't imagine we'd get any kind of talent back in return. There's not a GM in baseball who can't know how much we would love to get rid of him.

So for now, the solution has to come from within. That could mean Lima-Time. It could mean Yusaku Iriki-Time. You know what, I'm prepared to accept either of those options. Remember those voters in 2004 who took the ABB stance? Anybody But Bush? Count me as a committed ABZ.

Seriously though, I think our best hope is that this Zambrano saga resolves itself with a certain fitting conclusion. We trade Kazmir to get Zambrano, and I'm fairly certain the pitcher to save us from Zambrano is Mike Pelfrey.

I'm confident the Mets will give Zambrano at least 8 more starts. That'll take us to mid-June by my estimation. Will Pelfrey be ready by then? Not bloody likely, but my god do I hope so.

- A.F.O.M.G.

PS.. Thank god there's a day game today.