The Good, The Bad, and The Ollie

It may be far easier to unravel the mysteries of Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid, than it would be to figure out Oliver Perez.

Todays performance by Perez was like a perfect microcosm of his entire career.

He starts out be teasing us with a tantalizing performance in the first two innings that invoked memories of Sandy Koufax, and then in the next two innings he does his best Kei Igawa impression.

How can anyone be so good, and yet so bad?

After the game, Perez gave one of the most idiotic answers I ever heard a pitcher give in assessing his performance.

 ”All my pitches were working,” Perez said. “They were taking chances.”

What does that mean?

The rest of his teammates and coaches were dumbfounded to say the least.

When asked if he knew what Perez meant by that, catcher Ramon Castro said, “No.”

Pitching coach Dan Warthen? “I don’t understand,” Warthen said.

Perez was charged with eight earned runs in 4.1 innings of work. He now owns a 16.62 ERA after his season debut. He was one run shy of tying his all time worst performance when he allowed nine runs.

We own him for the next three years, so all we can do now is hope and pray that we see more good Ollie than bad Ollie or it may start to get very ugly when he walks from the bullpen to the mound.