Perez Pitching Well

by Charlie on Mar 29, 2006 2:54 PM EST in News Comment 6 comments

The Bucs currently lead the Red Sox, 2-1.

Whatever the Bucs' motivations for describing Oliver Perez as something other than a strikeout pitcher and denying that his velocity was especially important, Perez looks pretty darn close to his 2004 strikeout-throwing form right now. I'm excited. While his control is still a little shaky - he has only walked one guy, but he's running up a lot of three-ball counts and plainly isn't making all his pitches - he's throwing quite hard. ESPN's radar gun says his fastball is coming in at 84-87 MPH, but that's obviously wrong. My guess would be he's throwing 94-95 - not quite as fast as he threw in '04, but still awfully fast and way faster than he was apparently throwing as recently as ten days ago, when reports had him throwing about 90 MPH.

He's also throwing a breaking ball that, while not quite as knee-bucklingly ridiculous as it was in '04, is very good and is obviously confusing Boston hitters. He has also thrown a couple of nice changeups. He's striking out batters all over the place and his control is improving as he goes along. Last week, I was skeptical of Perez's and Humberto Cota's claims that Perez would pick up velocity as his arm strength improved, but that's plainly what has happened.

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I worried about Ollie

but I believed he would come back. Hopefully, he'll leave his Luis Tiant repertoire alone for the next few seasons.

by steve_z on Mar 29, 2006 3:21 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Why the skepticism on the radar gun?

What makes you think their gun is clearly wrong? I don't think he looked that fast (but not slow). I was struck by how he was throwing curves instead of sliders. The gun had them at 69-73, which makes sense. They were clearly not 88mph sliders as in 2004.

He was very effective. Dukish. The gun may have been off, but I don't think by that much. If he throws his fastball low 90's, he could be a very good pitcher because of the dramatic change of speed on his breaking ball.

azibuck

by azibuck on Mar 29, 2006 4:37 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Duke

I was kind of thinking Duke too, actually, although he didn't seem to have the command Duke does. You think he was throwing fastballs 84-87? Really? Maybe we were seeing two different numbers on the screen - mine's a little bit fuzzy in the corner and they were only showing speeds occasionally, but it definitely looked like 84-87 several times. It may have been a bit slower than the 95 I guessed in the post, but not by much. He was easily into the 90s. (I'm sure we'll see a more reliable gauge of his velocity in the paper tomorrow, but for now we have to guess.) You're right about the breaking balls - I couldn't guess the velocity, but they were definitely pretty slow.

by Charlie on Mar 29, 2006 5:20 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Perez

I watched as much of this game as I could while at work and the radar gun was rarely working. I concluded that it was only working when the pitcher threw offspeed stuff. I didn't catch one fastball that Perez or Schilling threw that registered on the radar. But again, I was half watching while trying to work at the same time. I was actually hoping that you guys would know exactly how hard he was throwing, and I was anxious to get home and brag about how good Perez looked today. Encouraging, indeed!

by ILLZ on Mar 29, 2006 5:30 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

The Gun

You may be right, 84-87 seems unreasonably low. I wish they had consistently shown the speeds, and that there was a pitcher other than Schilling for the Red Sox.

In the WBC when Perez faced Clemens, Ollie didn't hit 90, but Clemens was at 93-94, so I figured the speed shown for Ollie was legit. Schilling's velocity was way down at the end of last year, so even though he was also clocked in the mid-80's today, it's hard to say if it's because he also lost velocity, or the gun was off.

By the way, I became a big fan of Orel Hershiser today. I'd love to listen to him and Joe Morgan call a game together. I know (or have read anyway) that seamheads despise Morgan for being old school, but for fans of technique, he does a good job of breaking down a swing. And so it was today with Hershiser and pitching.

I kinda think the average fan doesn't care, or even know what is meant by "setting up a hitter." But Hershiser gave several peeks into what pitchers may have been doing. I find that stuff very interesting.

azibuck

by azibuck on Mar 29, 2006 9:45 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

The gun

I thought the same thing, Steve. I saw bits and pieces of Perez's outing, and I don't think I saw the gun on the screen once. The announcers commented that he really had some zip on his fastball, and I thought it looked like he had it at least over 90, if not quite in the 94-95 range Charlie placed it at. And those breaking pitches were nasty.

by Pat on Mar 29, 2006 5:51 PM EST reply actions 0 recs