When was the last time that two $12 million-a-year pitchers were dumped from their teams’ starting rotations at the same time and relegated to the bullpen? Has it ever happened? I don’t know, but while we ponder it, meet Oliver Perez and Javier Vazquez. Barring a minor miracle to come, Perez (Mets) and Vazquez (Yankees) represent questionable or really foolish judgments by their teams.
The Mets, despite plenty of eyewitness warnings, gave Perez a three-year, $36 million contract when he was a free agent before last season. The Yankees conveniently forgot the last time they saw Vazquez and acquired him from Atlanta for Melky Cabrera.
The Yankees can be forgiven their foolishness far sooner than the Mets theirs. The Mets have no excuse. Perez was left-handed and still young enough (27) to develop since left-handers historically develop later than right-handers?
Not good enough to warrant a $36 million contract. Players in the early stages of development don’t merit $12 million a year. That kind of money is for established pitchers. The only thing Perez has established is that he can’t pitch.
I will admit that I once believed that Perez was a pitcher worth having. When the Mets obtained him as a throw-in with Roberto Hernandez in the trading deadline deal for Xavier Nady in 2006, I thought it was a good move by the Mets.
Perez was two weeks from his 25th birthday and had pitched a terrific season for Pittsburgh two years earlier. He struck out 239 in 196 innings, leading major league pitchers with a ratio of 10.97 strikeouts per nine innings. His 2.98 earned average matched Rogers Clemens’ e.r.a. as the sixth best in the majors.
What was not to like about the kid? In the next season and a half the Pirates found out and were delighted to be able to dump him in the trade with the Mets, who were desperate for a late-inning reliever when Duaner Sanchez was injured in an automobile accident.
Instead of progressing since that highlight season of 2004, Perez has regressed. Oh, he posted a creditable 15-10 record and decent 3.56 e.r.a. (the league’s ninth lowest) in his first full season with the Mets, but that was Oliver the seductress, pitching just well enough to lure the Mets into his web.
He slipped in 2008 to 10-7 and 4.22, then had a disastrous performance last season, dividing his time among the Mets, the minors and the disabled list. The tipoff on his decline was in the numbers – 62 strikeouts and 59 walks in 66 innings.
How can a major league pitcher average nearly a walk an inning? Easy. Just watch Ollie pitch. In four July starts last season, he walked 21 in 22 innings. Extend that stretch to his final nine starts in July and August, and he walked 32 in 44 1/3 innings. He did all of that in the first year of his $12 million-a-year contract.
In the second year of that contract, Perez has walked 28 in 33 1/3 innings. Give him credit, though, for demonstrating remarkable consistency, a trait he has never been accused of having. Last season the left-hander had a ratio of 17.88 baserunners per nine innings. This season he is very close to that, 17.55.
That, of course, is not the consistency the Mets are looking for. What are they to do with a pitcher for whom the strike zone is a foreign destination?
They could release him. That step would be painfully expensive, but sending him out to start games is painful and destructive. His teammates cannot possibly have any confidence in Perez when he pitches, and when he starts walking batters their reaction has to be oh, no, here we go again.
Releasing Perez would be a bold move but a costly one. Here’s $20 million, Ollie, go away and quit plaguing us. I could understand why the Mets wouldn’t want to release him, but he’s their monster. They created him. Let them suffer with him.
If they could get him to agree to go to the minors, that move would probably provide the best opportunity for fixing his problems, but he doesn’t seem to be inclined to accept that approach. And anyway, the Mets tried that solution last year, and it didn’t work.
Meanwhile, Perez continues stealing money from the Mets. On the other hand, the crime is not theft but fraud. Perez has been masquerading fraudulently as a major league pitcher. The Mets, however, should be charged as accessories to fraud.
They have put Perez on the mound seven times this season as a starting pitcher. That’s false advertising, fraud, you name it. The Mets are guilty of perpetrating the fraud on the public, and Perez is guilty of falsely impersonating a major league pitcher.
Vazquez, on the other hand, hasn’t defrauded the Yankees. He didn’t offer his services for pay. The $11.5 million he makes each year comes from a contract he signed with the White Sox, who traded him to the Braves a year before he wound up back with the Yankees.
The right-hander had a decent season in 2004 for the Yankees with a 14-10 record, but he had a 4.91 e.r.a. and worse, he ended the year in relief, giving up a grand slam to Johnny Damon that fueled the Red Sox Game 7 victory in the outrageous league championship series.
When the Yankees added him to their starting rotation last December, some of their fans warned what would happen. Nothing good, of course, and they were right.
Vazquez, 33, has been a runmaker this season, giving up 25 runs in 30 innings in his first 5 starts. Oddly the Yankees demoted him after his best start, a seven-inning effort against Detroit in which he allowed just two runs.
Some of his critics say Vazquez will not succeed as a pitcher in New York after the Damon grand slam. Without necessarily invoking the name, they liken Vazquez’s experience to the nightmare Ed Whitson suffered with the Yankees in 1985.
Whitson signed with the Yankees as a free agent because they made him by far the best offer. But he didn’t pitch up to his value, and the fans resented him, as if they and not George Steinbrenner were paying him.
The fans made his life miserable, sometimes waiting for him to leave Yankee Stadium and following him to his New Jersey home, where, the pitcher said, they scattered nails across the driveway.
Vazquez has not received that kind of treatment, but he will very likely emerge from the bullpen in the near future and find out how the fans really feel about him. As for Perez, the fans will be happy if they never see him emerge from the bullpen.