It's official: Not even Sandy Koufax can help Oliver Perez.Just when I was staring to feel good ... Ike Davis was raking, Jenrry Mejia's pitches were moving, Fernando Martinez hits two dingers against the Nats on Saturday ... here comes Perez to remind us that it does no good to have Davis and Martinez with the big club if they're going to do nothing but watch more Ollie gopher balls fly into the Pepsi Porch.
Perez made his long anticipated (long feared) spring debut, and gave up five runs in three innings. Would have been six if not for a Frenchy cannon from the outfield. Between this and Mike Pelfrey's not-so-hot outing on Saturday, the fear now is that the starting rotation is going to be a big giant doughnut. Great on the ends with Johan Santana and Niese/Nieve/Figueroa at five, who instill more confidence in me right now than Ollie/Little Pelf/John Maine who make up the jelly in the so-called middle. To me, Ollie's extremely lucky that Hisanori Takahashi had a stellar debut Sunday, or else instead of talking about Takahashi we'd be talking more about how the S.S. Metropolitan is sinking ... on March 7th.
But at least Oliver's throwing strikes. Great, except his strikes go faster the other way.
With Perez, it's a matter of choosing your demise. Will it be two to the back of the head (strikes)? Or will it be a million paper cuts (balls)? In any event you will die. And your death certificate will list Perez's linescore that particular night under "cause of death".
4 comments:
I love how the expectations are so low for Ollie now. Quote from Dan Warthen: "Good outing. He threw strikes."
Dan's quote after Ollie's next outing may be: "Good outing. He was present at game time."
First game of spring training, hope you are as overwhelmingly excited if he manages to pitch well in his next one, not that i'm holding my breath.
Thomas
PS...Ike is hitting very well, but his fielding is not looking so hot.
somebody should ask "he threw strikes" warthen if he is concerned that ollie can't break 90 on the gun with a fastball..I predict that the wilpons will paint citicavern blue and orange and bring in all the fences by 20 feet before ollie turns into a mlb pitcher ..the only good thing about ollie is he makes me forget how much i can't stand casdtillo when is on the mound..
First off, Ollie did break 90 on the gun today.
Secondly, this offseason has made me embarrassed to be a Mets fan. Not because of the team, who I think made good moves by not making bad ones, but because of all of the fans who I once considered to be some of the smartest in baseball looking like a whiny bunch of idiots. I live in Philadelphia, and I expect this out of Philly fans. We were always better than that. This offseason we have been significantly worse. Metsra, you've always been passionate but reasonably level-headed which is why I read regularly. I'm not necessarily on team Ollie, but to use today, his first spring training game as ammunition against him is ridiculous. If you're going to adhere to that logic though, Barry Bond's home run record doesn't stand a chance to Ike's 100+ HRs he'll have this year. Save the hatred for when the games count, when they're doing more than just trying to get in shape for real baseball.
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