Pelfrey pounds on big-league door
At the same time, Mike Pelfrey is in the prenatal stages of his big-league career, and all about the roundest of numbers.
Glavine is left-handed and less than two weeks from middle age. He was born in '66. Pelfrey is right-handed, and 2007 will be here before his 23rd birthday. He wears No. 66, an indication of his plebe status. Pelfrey pounds the strike zone, Glavine avoids it whenever possible.
Glavine is 6-foot tall; Pelfrey seven inches taller. And as Glavine acknowledged in the early stages of the Mets' Spring Training camp, "I'm pretty sure the difference in how hard we throw is a lot greater."
Their careers have intersected here, far from Wichita State, where Pelrey made enough of an intercollegiate mark to attract the professional scouts and agent Scott Boras, and far from Boston's satellite communities, where Glavine did enough to attract the Atlanta Braves and Los Angeles Kings. It is the second intersection.
"The Braves were always on, and Tom Glavine was always winning," Pelfrey said, explaining his television viewing habits as a teenager.
TBS was his favorite monogram and Glavine was his favorite player.
"Now we play catch together," Pelfrey said.
It's a piece of "Oh boy" reality that puts an extra large smile on the face connected to his XL body each time he speaks of it.
"When I realized I'd be in the same room as Tom Glavine ... pretty cool," Pelfrey said.
Their clubhouse addresses here are not close. Glavine lives on pitchers' row. His closest neighbors are named Martinez and Heilman. Pelfrey's locker is way over there, around the corner among the more anonymous. A year from now, though, if Glavine opts to continue his quest for 300 victories with the Mets, and if Pelfrey advances as the club projects, they will be clubhouse neighbors. And maybe sooner.
Even a brief conversation about Pelfrey with general manager Omar Minaya is bound to elicit some talk of the prospect pitching for the Mets in 2006. Minaya may not promote it, but he clearly isn't opposed to promoting the Mets' first-round selection from the 2005 First-Year Player Draft to the big leagues at some point this summer.
"I'm not saying we're going to bring Mike Pelfrey up, but I can't say that we won't," Minaya said. "We usually are conservative, but a player like this, with so much ability, can come very fast."
Pitchers generally develop more quickly than position players, and power pitchers have the wherewithal to minimize the damage of a misplaced pitch. Make no mistake, Pelfrey is a power pitcher.
"That's why we can think about him," Minaya said. "He has weapons."
Pelfrey throws two-seam and four-seam fastballs, and he isn't unfamiliar with the mid-90s on the radar gun. He has developed a circle changeup and is working on a breaking pitch he says can act like a curve or a slider, depending on how he releases it.
That's another difference that exists between him and Glavine, who, until last summer, threw a fastball and a changeup.
"We're not the same, but I can learn from him," Pelfrey said. "He's done so many things in his career that I'd love to be able to do. And he helps me. He's treated me really nice. He just comes and talks or asks if I want to play catch. And I'm saying, 'That's Tom Glavine. I'm playing catch with Tom Glavine.' I used to watch him. The Braves were always on. Their games were the ones we could always see, and they always won.
"Look at the career he's had. I can't look at anything like that and think about myself. But it's what you'd like to do."
Pelfrey probably will remain in Major League camp until the needs of the five projected starters will limit the innings he can pitch in exhibition games. He will begin the season -- his first as a professional -- with the St. Lucie Mets in the Class A Florida State League, the most competitive Mets affiliate at that level. If the April weather in Binghamton, N.Y., were more temperate, he would make his professional debut in Double-A.
The Mets won't be surprised if the climate at Shea Stadium in August suits him just fine.
Marty Noble is a reporter for MLB.com.