Some Ollie number crunching

OK, so let's look at some numbers from Ollie's last two starts and see how they measure up to 2004:

2-0, 10 1/3 IP, 5 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 16Ks, 9 BB

This projects out to the most important stats:

3.60 ERA, 1.35 WHIP, 13.93 K/9, 7.84 BB/9

When compared to those stats last year:

2.99 ERA, 1.15 WHIP, 10.97 K/9, 3.72 BB/9

they don't measure up too badly. The most disturbing trend is that he got one groundout to seven flyouts last night and 1:6 on Saturday against the Rockies (as pointed out by Jeremy and PAD), though Rory brings up a good point to counter this, unlike Dave Williams and Josh Fogg, when Ollie throws his low pitches well, they're strikeouts, not groundouts. The flyout:total out ratio isn't that high. His strikeouts are a bit higher because of the Reds and the Rockies. They strike out a lot, especially the Reds. He's still showing a tenendecy towards the longball though, which I don't like. He gave up 22 gopher balls in 30 starts last year, but he gave one up in each of his last two starts. All in all, he looks a lot better than he did in April. He seems to be on the road to recovery, and it appears the last thing to come back will be his control. We still need a start against a good team to fully evaluate his status, the Reds and Rockies are both poor hitting teams that strike out a lot, more or less teams that play into Ollie's hands whether he's 100% or not.