Well, That Was Incredibly Mediocre

There was one clear upside to the postponement of last night's NLCS Game 5: an extra 24 hours to process Sunday night's pitching performance of one Oliver Perez. Perez got the win in the Mets' 12-5 victory, but his overall line on the night was underwhelming at best. He pitched 5 and 2/3 innings, giving up five earned runs on nine hits while (three of them home runs), while striking out three and walking one. In total, Oli threw 92 pitches l (high for his inning count), with only 56 of them going for strikes. His ERA for the game was a horrific 7.94.

Not surprisingly, these results are right on par with Perez's regular season statistics. Having watched this incarnation of Oli pitch up close and personal for a season and a half, I would say there's a pretty consistent pattern to how he operates. Out of every four starts, one of them will be excellent (like when he went toe-to-toe with Johan Santana in June), one of them will be horrific (the aforementioned rain delay game against San Diego), and two of them will be middling (like the one Sunday night). The upshot of all of this? A 3-13 record and an ERA of 6.55.

The particularly amusing thing about Sunday's game was the praise showered on Perez by the national media (ie ESPN) after the game. Sports Center anchor Neil Everett called Oli's display "gutty, " while Baseball Tonight analyst Steve Phillips was enamored with the fact that Perez kept his team in the game, and pitched well enough to win. He even tossed out the adjective "great." To buttress his argument, Phillips cited New York's Steve Trachsel, who the evening before gave up five earned runs in just one inning pitched. The Mets lost that game 5-0.

Just to be clear, New York's offense scored 12 runs during the time Perez was in the game. Middle of the order hitters Carlos Beltran and Carlos Delgado went a combined five-for-seven with three home runs and seven RBIs. So what Steve Phillips is saying is that for a pitcher to be considered great, all he needs are two All-Stars hitters in his line-up performing at their peak level, and, to not to be Steve Trachsel. Tell me again, why exactly did the Mets fire him as their general manager?