This series highlights each night's most important thing. Sometimes they will be significant individual performances. Sometimes they will be interesting team facts. Either way, each night's "most important fact" is something worth checking out.
I think the story tonight is fairly obvious. Mike Pelfrey was phenomenal. As you undoubtedly heard about 142 times tonight if you watched or listened to the broadcast, Pelfrey ran his scoreless inning streak to EIGHTEEN innings.
He lowered his ERA to 0.86 and his WHIP to 1.00. He induced a double play and kept the ball on the ground. He got through seven innings with a breezy 102 pitches. He got 8 groundouts and 6 strikeouts compared to only 5 flyouts.
As a general matter, there is nothing better for a team than a sinkerball pitcher who can strike guys out. They chew up innings better than any other kind of pitcher. If Pelfrey can continue along these lines, he could be *really* valuable to this team -- even moreso than a guy like Santana can, even if in a statistical vacuum Santana's numbers might look better.
Pelfrey now has HALF the Mets wins and ALL of the Mets saves. He's been a rock. The Cubs are truly struggling right now but that's no reason to take anything away from Pelf. A very impressive outing.
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First Runner Up for Most Important: Jose Reyes' four hit game.
Second Runner Up: Mets win tonight makes first back-to-back wins of the season.
Third Runner Up: Jason Bay continues to struggle mightily.
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