Let's not freak out about Mike Pelfrey just yet...

I am as sad as anyone to see that the Big Pelf is most likely out for the season. Despite my regular calls for his ouster from the team I was happy to see him succeeding and thought he might actually be a strong part of our rotation. Also if he was going to be gone, now is a terrible time for it happen when the market for a replacement is not as strong. That being said, let's not all freak out about losing Mike Pelfrey just yet...

The beauty of advanced baseall stats is that we have really simple ways to quantify things, like the loss of Pelf. WAR tells us how many wins a player contributed to the team more than a replacement player could have and therefore how many we can expect to lose had they not been there. Let's look at Mike's fWAR over the years:

Season	Pelf fWAR
07	0.3
08	3
09	1.6
10	2.8
11	0.7

Last year Pelf was responsible for less than one win, so his presence was essentially meaningless. At his absolute best Pelfrey was responsible for 3 wins in 2008. I think a best case scenario for this year is that Pelf would be able to repeat his brilliant 2008 campaign. Therefore had Pelf been as good as his best year (which was not the most likely scenario) we would be losing 3 more game in 2012. 3 games is a lot, 3 games could mean everything. If we miss the playoffs by 3 games, I'll blame Mike Pelfrey. But in the grand scheme of things it probably won't make much of a difference. It's certainly not enough to say the team suffered a serious blow by losing Mike. Also the odds were that Mike would have settled into somewhere between his 2008 and 2011 numbers and been responsible for more like 1.5 wins. Either way the Mets will soldier on, we wish Pelf luck and a speedy recovery. Let the Chris Schwinden era begin!