What It Means To Pitch With Confidence From The Mets' Top Baseball Pitching Prospect

Being Mike Pelfrey wasn't always the glamour gig it is today. The Mets' best arm on the farm grew up Wichita poor with a father who was nowhere to be found and a future in baseball that was anything but solid.

Sitting in the visiting clubhouse of the Altoona Curve last week - the Pirates' Double-A affiliate - he goes back to a moment when he was in Long Beach, Calif., in March of 2004. Pelfrey, then a sophomore at Wichita State, saw what he wanted to be. Jered Weaver, the brother of former Yankee Jeff Weaver and a first-round pick of the Angels, was on the mound for Long Beach State and he was "dealin'," says Pelfrey.

Weaver recorded his first 11 outs on Ks, but in the fifth he gave up a base hit, his first of the game. Weaver didn't walk back to he mound rattled; his eyes burning, he glared at the form now standing on the first-base bag.

"He kind of stared at him as if you say 'Hey, do you know who I am? I'm Jered Weaver, don't you ever do that again'," says Pelfrey.

Wichita State head baseball coach Gene Stephenson remembers it, too. "He made you sick to watch him," he says of Weaver.

But Pelfrey was inspired. "Weaver's presence on the mound was unbelievable," he says, "and our hitters and everybody else just hated watching him, but I was like, 'I need to be like like that.'"

"You've got to be confident when you're throwing," he adds. "This game's confidence, it's mental. So, I definitely think I'm mentally strong, that's a big part of my game."

His pitching coach, Wichita State's Brent Kimnetz, drilled toughness into his players. "He used to tell us, 'I can stand anything but being out there and pitching scared'," Pelfrey says.

Mike Pelfrey doesn't pitcher scared, he doubles up pitches inside, something Mets closer Billy Wagner taught him at spring training, and he's Wichita State's all-time leader in hit batsman while walking the fewest per nine innings (1.7).

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