Metsblog and their mid-season grades ...

Metsblog.com is currently doing a great piece asking the fans to give each of the players on the team a mid-season grade. The results are sometimes comical as many of the outspoken metsfans have pretty much lost all faith in their team. Seeing Johan Santana get a vote for an F for instance his comical as even after a low first half he is still one of the best pitchers in the game ...

Here is the link to their current piece on Ollie:

http://www.metsblog.com/2008/07/01/poll-mid-season-grade-for-oliver-perez/#comment-236958

As of this moment, Ollie has received a C with 51% of the votes and a smattering of other choices. I too voted a C. In the comment section I voiced my reasoning:

Comment by gutterkizmet
2008-07-01 14:39:23
I am still probably the biggest Ollie Fan out there - I have the olliverperezfan site to prove it - that being said:
I gave him a C - probably higher than he deserved, but even in school your are graded on the final exam more heavily than the breadth of the entire work - what have you done for me lately.

If you look back through the posts you will see I predicted the great start against the Yankees - mostly because of their lefty centric line-up. The Yanks sat most of their lefty’s and he still pitched lights out - being the reason I gave him a C instead of a D. (I predicted he would do great and the Mets would immediately offer him to the Yankees for some MLB ready talent as they Steinbrenners use the “if you can’t beat em, buy em philosophy”

The change in his wind-up with the back and forth instead of right to left, combined with the hitch at his belt, and the center of the rubber thing might end up being the fix he needs. The confidence he displayed on the mound with the K of ARod and others made me a believer again.

Isn’t a VORP around 0 basically saying he is league average? Isn’t average a C?

Anyway his stuff and his latest outing give him a C. His next outing against the Phillies will determine his final grade though:

Great outing with 0 or 1 walk and 0-1 ER will push him up to a B.
Outing with 0-2 walks and 2-3 ER will keep him at a C (Hitter friendly park)
Any more than 2-3 walks will push him to a D
If his fastball goes back to 89-91 will probably make him a D too
A Shelling will make him an F and probable tradebait or minor leaguer.

Then I also added this:

Comment by gutterkizmet
2008-07-01 14:57:03
BTW - I still say C average considering what I just looked at:

National League Average:
ERA: 4.24 (Ollie: 4.96)
W/L%: .500 (Ollie .545)
K/9: 6.8 (Ollie 7.6)
BB/9: 3.5 (Ollie 5.1)
WHIP: 1.40 (Ollie 1.47)
BAA .262 (Ollie .243)

He is a little worse than avg in ERA
He is a little better in Win%
He is much better in K/9
He is MUCH worse in BB/9
His WHIP is withing a standard deviation of AVG.
His BAA is better than AVG.

All in all - if his new motion can give him better control than he will be much better than AVG - but for the first half I would say he looks like the average pitcher. Perfect for a 3-4 slot guy, great for a #5 - with the potential to be much much better.

What do you think?