Oliver Perez

I TiVo'd ESPNs "coverage" of the Mexico-Canada WBC game from yesterday in hopes of catching Ollie on the mound. ESPN condensed the three hour game into like an hour and a half, so thusly I only saw 3 of the six batters that Perez faced. It was ugly. Aside from what the boxscore can tell you, 35 pitches with only 16 strikes, 3 walks and 3 strikeouts, he looked exactly like the Perez we saw last year. His fastball hovered between 88 and 89, topping out at 90 only once in the batters that I saw him face. He was close to the strikezone, but not exactly in it and he relied on a couple calls from the umpires to get out of the inning relatively unscathed (he came in with a runner on first and ended up walking him around, providing Canada with their only run). He looked a lot like a guy that would benefit from being in camp pitching on a regular basis, instead of staying with Team Mexico pitching maybe once a week. Unfortunately, Mexico won last night in a blowout, meaning they will advance in the WBC no matter what the outcome of today's US/South Africa game is.