 |  |
| Perez | Wellemeyer |
| 1-1, 7.84 | 1-1, 4.50 |
It's not quite facing Ben Sheets (Ben Sheets!), but Oliver Perez is a ghost of free agents past, isn't he? I'm always interested, and a little worried, to see how the moves I was sure were so absolutely perfect for the Cardinals actually play out for other teams. So far re: Perez, a mixed bag.
That shiner he's got on his ERA comes from game one; he has that in common with Wellemeyer:
| IP | H | R | ER | BB | K | HR | BB | |
| PEREZ | 4.1 | 5 | 8 | 8 | 5 | 7 | 1 | 16.62 |
| WELLEMEYER | 5.0 | 12 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 9.00 |
16.62 is not an ERA you see every day, even in blowouts. In that game Perez was all over the place; he struck out the side in the second inning, one-two-three, and then walked two batters to set up a three run Joey Votto home run in the third. His eight runs were scored in two nonconsecutive innings, four each. Wellemeyer mostly just had that miserable second inning, in which he allowed five singles(!) and walked two for good measure.
Also of note: through two starts, Fangraphs's pitch types chart shows an interesting--and, for me, welcome--change in Wellemeyer's approach through two starts. This is a really small sample, and I'm loath to extrapolate too much from it, but thus far Wellemeyer's used his fastball (which is--small sample, early in the season--about a mile an hour off from last year) considerably less and gone to his changeup six percent more often. I've always thought that changeup was his best pitch, and before he developed the slider, as a Cub, he used it more often. I'll be watching to see how often he goes with it today.