About Oliver Perez

So Oliver Perez has been a $36 million dollar bust; I wanted to take a closer look at what has happened. Using Pitch F/X, which is a great tool, and viewable to the public for free at Brooks Baseball (its where I got my data), I compared Ollie's last start, and his best start from last year,
Sagainst the Phillies, where he went 7.2, gave up one run, one walk !!!!!, and struck out 12. (Threw 103 pitches, which is the same from his last start)
Obviously the first thing you would want to look at is release point, cause that always seems to be his problem.
First the Phillies game data from last year: (to make bigger, go to the link), or right click, and open link.
And now the Rockies game: (to make bigger go here), or right click, and open link.
So, it looks like he is releasing from exactly the same area. So that is not the problem, it must be something else.
Well, where are those pitches going? Obviously, they're not going for strikes, but where are they missing?
First the Phillies: (to make bigger go here)
And now the Rockies: (Go here)
From what it looks on the small size of these pictures (it's so I could fit them in), in his last start Ollie has been missing to the right hand side a lot more. The balls that were consistently in play were mostyly either outside from righties (good) or inside to lefties (not so good). But doesn't look so bad from here. If Dan Warthen could figure out why he's missing to the inside, maybe he can return to July 24, 2008 form, where he didn't throw as many outside pitches, and was more consistently in the strike zone (but the balls in play were all up and down the middle, thats a little worrying).
Really, I have no idea how to fix Ollie, but I just wanted to take a look to see whats different. A not a lot is different from the guy who walked 4, gave up 3 runs in 5 innings, and threw 103 pitches in those 5 innings to the guy who walked one, struck out 12, gave up one run in 7.2 innings, and threw 103 pitches. So maybe he won't turn out to be a bust (who am I kidding?)