Ollie vs. the USA

The line looks good for Oliver Perez tonight, as he pitched 3 shutout innings against the star-studded US lineup. He only gave up one hit and one walk over the span, and threw 21 of his 36 pitches for strikes. Still, I watched most of it and wasn't really assuaged at all by his performance. His performance was essentially something you'd expect out of Paul Maholm, not Oliver Perez. The US hit several balls hard right at people and sent a couple balls to the warning track. He didn't manage to strike out one batter in his three innings of work and his velocity was still waaay waaaay down. The TV gun may not be accurate (though if anything I'd imagine it would be hopped up for the event, especially with the Rocket on the mound for the US) but Ollie rarely topped 88 with his fastball, and sometimes I could've sworn I saw a couple fastballs cross the plate at 85 mph. We're not talking about him dropping 3 or 4 mph to rein his control in, we're talking about some of his fastballs crossing the plate 10 miles an hour slower than they did in 2004. That's a problem. I think it's also telling that after 3 relatively easy innings with a very low pitch count (especially for him), Mexico's manager still pulled Perez. Maybe he was just happy to get 3 innings out of him after his last outing, but given the preponderance of evidence that suggest something else, I'm not so sure.