Poll Results and Pelfrey

(Note: Immediately following this post is an ode to Chad Johnson, Ocho-Cinco, by Sip. Be sure to check in over the weekend as we have content planned for Saturday, a football preview, and Sunday, a weekly recap.)

MSE: So what are you guys going to write about now that your beloved Mets...?

A.F.O.M.G.: I don't know. Things come up. You find something.

MSE: Do they have a game tonight?

A.F.O.M.G.: The Mets? No, not tonight. Off night tonight.

Sigh. So it goes.

To her credit, she was actually asking about the World Series, but you couldn't miss the humor in the way the words came out. Anyway.

Poll Results

As promised, today we'll devote a little time to discussing the results of our poll on Wednesday for the John Rocker Award.

Really interesting results, actually. When looking at them, what's important to appreciate is that the voting occured in two distinct waves.

Wave 1 consisted of our regular readers, and was an unprecedented strong showing.

A little backstory. We've run polls before here at Y2K with very limited voting from our audience. I believe the previous high was 30 votes in a given poll.

At the start of the day on Wednesday, two things were different at Y2K than they were when we ran our previous polls. One, we were getting, on average, about 300 more readers a day since our last poll. Two, in order to see the results this time, you had to vote.

Wednesday morning I told Sip I'd be happy if 50 people voted. Much to my delight, about 100 people voted in Wave 1.

I didn't write down the results at the time, but I remember thinking them over and feel like I can accurately reproduce them to some extent. Here's what I know:

1. After about 100 votes, Braden Looper was the clear leader, with 49% of the vote.

2. Yadier Molina was a distant, but nonetheless respectable, second. I want to say he had about 17% of the vote.

3. Locked in a battle for third place were Duaner Sanchez's Taxi and The Home Run Derby.

4. Nobody cared about Johnny Damon, Jose Guillen or "Our Team. Our Time."

The second wave came when the good people over at Deadspin (really a must-read by the way) decided to give a link to the article.

Participation in the poll exploded from there, and by last count 633 people had voted in the poll.

The 533 additional votes had an interesting effect on the poll:

1. Braden Looper received the majority of the Deadspin vote, and increased his lead by 10 whole percentage points.

2. Yadier Molina slipped slightly, but had a pretty consistent constituency in both Waves.

3. A lot of Deadspinners really detested "Our Team. Our Time." evidently. Absolutely nobody had voted for that one before Deadspin got involved. It's received 42 votes since and is close to the third place pack.

4. Speaking of the third place pack, the Taxi held strong, but the Derby was replaced by Johnny Damon. Almost no one in the Deadspin Wave voted for the Derby, but a ton voted for Damon. These people were probably the hardcore Yankee haters who don't particularly have an opinion about the Mets, but that's just speculation.

5. Nobody cared about Jose Guillen.

So what's it all mean? I have three conclusions:

1. Jose Guillen: All is forgiven.

2. Yadier Molina: Close. Maybe next year.

3. Braden Looper: Come on down, shithead, you're the winner of the 2006 John Rocker Award!

Pelfrey

I picked up an interesting article yesterday on the Mets Geek comment board that I wanted to pass along.

It's an article in Baseball America about Mike Pelfrey. You remember Pelfrey, don't you? Back before John Maine and Ollie Perez dazzled us in Games 6 and 7 of the NLCS, Pelfrey was the Great White Hope of the Mets' rotation.

Lean, tall and completely unable to keep his tongue in his mouth while pitching, Pelfrey burst on to our radars in January when he officially signed with the Mets. By midsummer he was in the Show, starting in place of Pedro Martinez.

Sip and I were at his first game, which he won, but after his first several starts the results were mixed.

On the one hand, you couldn't look at his mid-to-high 90s gas and not be impressed. But the book on Pelfrey had been all too correct when it came to his secondary pitches.

Pelfrey struggled with the command on his curveball and change-up, allowing Major League hitters to sit on his fastball. In short, Pelfrey was a work in progress.

That brings us to the Baseball America article. Turns out, Pelfrey has scrapped his curveball in favor of a slider, which one scount from an AL club said "has the makings of a plus pitch."

Pelfrey is an interesting guy to watch. I have to think he's a stretch to make the rotation out of Spring Training, but if he works hard through Winter Ball he could start the year in Triple A and remain a viable spot starter candidate should the need arise.

We said at the time that if Pelfrey could develop an out pitch that he could be the ace of this staff, in time. It seems likely that he's a dream that won't be realized until 2008 (the New York market being what it is), but if he can turn this slider into the plus-pitch that it has the potential to become, well, we could be looking at this guy's tongue for a long time to come.

Or maybe I'm just a Mets fan getting all worked up about another go-nowhere prospect, eh Mr. Long Island?

- A.F.O.M.G.