there’s a scene in the wizard of oz when the munchkin-land munchkins start sing-songing about the wicked witch’s demise. now, i wish no ill on anyone, but the level of giddiness i reached when i saw four beautiful words on my computer screen – “mets release oliver perez” – approached singsong altitude.
that selfish, erratic, oblivious bum is gone.
the pitcher whose era, walk rates, whip, velocity and control (ha. ha.) have been spiraling downward while his ego has been trending up (we can credit omar minaya for a lot of that) will no longer sully the name of the new york metropolitans. there are plenty of others who can take over there.
nothin' but headaches. at least he was reliable.
again, i’m going to go a little too grand-scale here, but the burden lifted from my chest feels like what i’d imagine frodo felt when the one ring melted in the fires of mount doom. a horrible weight is no more.
now sure, the weight actually still appears on the madoff mets’ balance sheet, but they’re the ones who once believed scott boras’ schpeel about how oliver perez is the new sandy koufax, so i really can’t help them there.
the guy’s only attractive baseball quality is the fact that he throws the ball with his left hand. true, there was once a potential pitcher in that self-absorbed head – the guy did win 15 games for us, and had it not been for yadier &*#@! molina, ollie may have been remembered for a tight 2006 nlcs game 7 appearance. although, if it hadn’t been for the catch, perez would have blown that game himself.
to say things deteriorated from there would be the understatement of the century.
i’ll say this for him – ollie perez is one of the most dependable pitchers in baseball. every time he takes the ball, you have complete confidence in his ability to throw it away from the plate or right into the path of a sweet spot of a bat. you know you’re going to get no more than four innings of solid, whip-killing soul-crushing trainwreck pitching, ideally with a few runs walked in. you never have to question what’s coming. so i’ll give him that.
this release should have been a forgone conclusion, and indeed most of the media painted it that way, but i actually harbored tremendous dread that #46 would still be with us on opening day.
the thing is, i don’t understand why it took this long. i mean, sure, the money is already lost, and i completely respect sandy and terry’s decision to evaluate ollie for themselves rather than simply going with the glowingly negative recommendations of everyone with eyes. but it was abundantly clear from the early days of pitchers and catchers that his velocity hadn’t come back but his erratic location was spot on (er, off?) he should have been gone to give someone else a real shot at making the team.
i’ve been trying to figure out why it took so long for perez to go, or why they’d release luis first. i have a few different theories, but the prevailing one is this: the front office knew that cutting luis and ollie were literally the only things that could energize the fan base right now. (i’d just like to point out that this does not bode well for the team this year.) so they waited until it got closer to should-we-buy-tickets? time and cut the underperforming overpaids one at a time so fans could savor these little moments. i wonder if they got the ticket spike they were hoping for. (i’ll save my thoughts on buying mets tickets for this season for another time.)
i know i quoted this already in a post about luis, but here’s an actual ollie quote from a spring training game: ”It was not what I wanted, but you just have to take it easy and try to get ready for the next day … walking three guys in a row is part of the game. It’s going to happen again, maybe next time.” ollie, i could see you walking a whole lineup in order.
i find oliver perez so odious that i hardly want to waste more words on him. in this case, i think photos do a pretty good job of telling the story.
ollie messes up.
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ollie sits on the mound after he messes up.
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ollie sits in the dugout after he *really* messes up.
~
good luck with that.
i wouldn’t want him back even if he did become the next sandy koufax.
