Ollie's velocity

Dejan's write-up of yesterday's Bucs/BoSox game concurs with the opinion of many that watched Oliver Perez pitch yesterday on the ESPN telecast, mainly that the radar gun, which only seemed to be working some of the time, seemed to be slow most of the afternoon. Also, his final strikeout on Ortiz, which a pitch which had some nasty break on it that I incorrectly characterized as a slider yesterday was instead a split-fingered changeup. That makes sense, as the pitch was much slower than a regular slider, but didn't break like a curveball. I don't even think I know what a split-fingered changeup is, but it sounds pretty tough to hit. In fact, 5 of Ollie's 7 Ks came with his offspeed stuff. Tracy's comments were pretty simple:

I saw a guy interested in being the ace of the staff. He pitched like an ace. He had the demeanor of one. I was extremely pleased to see that.

Maybe the immature, laundry-cart kicking pitcher is finally growing up.