Oliver Perez’ much-awaited return to the big league rotation yields an outing of 5 innings pitched, two strikeouts, and seven walks. He needed 108 pitches to get through five, out of which 53 were balls. And this is considered progress.

For the record, Perez’s last start in AAA prior to being recalled saw him throw 92 pitches, out of which only half were strikes.

Yup, sounds to me like he got his kinks worked out.  Welcome back, Ollie. Because you’re still better than Tim Redding.

I can’t quite explain why those in the new-age statistics community fawn over the “three-true outcomes” player. We love seeing them hit a ball 450-feet, we applaud their walks, and are entertained by their ever climbing strikeout totals. But this year, that TTO club is on the verge of losing one of their true members – Jack Cust.

Ever since he was acquired by Oakland a couple of seasons ago, Cust was unleashed on the world as a prototypical TTO guy. In 2008, Cust whiffed 197 times, had 111 free trips to first and hit 33 round trippers with a .231 batting average. A hallmark season.

But in 2009, Cust has been doing something far more often than he has thus far in his career. He’s actually swinging the bat. In years past, Cust swung at roughly 62% of pitches in the strike zone (MLB average is around 66%). That number has climbed to 71.4% in 2009. Moreover, Cust is swinging at pitches outside the zone more frequently as well (up to 21% of balls out of the zone compared to roughly 15% over his first two seasons in Oakland).

He’s still on pace to hit 32 HRs, and he’s still batting .230 (thanks to a much lower BABiP than in years past). However, as a result of putting the ball in play more often, his strikeout rate has fallen considerably, from 41.5% and 41% in ‘07 and ‘08 respectively, all the way down to 28.1% this season. What’s more, Cust is now walking in just 11.7% of his plate appearances, a steep decline from his numbers in ‘07 (21%) and ‘08 (18.8%).

So if his batting average is remaining fairly constant in comparison to his career numbers even though he’s taking fewer pitches, that means his OBP is taking a pretty big hit. Between 2007-2008, Cust had a very strong .390 OBP. His 2009 number currently stands at a below-average .320. And if that weren’t enough, all those extra swings aren’t resulting in more extra-base hits either – he’s just making more outs and making life easier on opposing pitchers.

I don’t know if the A’s staff specifically asked Cust to cut down on his Ks or if he himself decided to do so. But with 68 games in the books, the 2009 version of Jack Cust is considerably worse than the previous incarnations.

Growing up, I heard announcers and commentators talking all the time about how the ever-climbing strikeout totals in the early 1990’s was a bad thing. Former players would say things like “in my day, you were embarrassed as hell to strikeout 100 times a year”. I’m not saying that strikeouts are a good thing. An out is an out. But by trying to cut down on his Ks, Jack Cust is becoming a lesser player. So figure that one out on your own.

Piping hot from the Department of Small Sample Size, Blue Jays shortstop Marco Scutaro, of all people, has a .927 OPS one month into the season.

Many people have noticed his eye-popping 5 home runs in a single month, but considering that his previous career high for an entire season is a mere 9 homers, the power surge is not very likely to continue.

But what is more interesting is that one month in, Scutaro already has 22 walks, good for second best in the Major Leagues, behind only Jason Bay’s 23.

Now walks are usually considered something that is pretty much under a batter’s control – far more than batting average or even homers – and thus less susceptable to the whims of sample size.

What makes Scutaro’s walk total so amazing is that he was never all that much of a walker before – his highest single season total was 57, set last year, and his career 162-game average is a mere 52.

But at present, the 33-year-old Scutaro is on pace to walk 149 times this year, which is the kind of walk rate that would put a man up there with the all time greats.

Look, nobody expects Scutaro to keep putting up Pujols-like numbers all year.  But if he really has turned a corner with his pitch selection or is seeing the ball better or something, than that actually might explain some of the increased home runs, and it also means that even as Scutaro regresses back to the mean, he probably won’t regress all the way.

Because walks are more skill than luck, and Scutaro may have developed a new skill.

And considering that he plays shortstop, he doesn’t even have to keep putting up Pujols numbers to be an extremely valuable player, which makes it look like the Blue Jays got a steal in a player they essentially got from the Oakland A’s for a box of crackerjacks.

Boston's Achilles heel

It’s Sox versus Sox this weekend, as the Chicago White Sox come to Fenway for a three-game series against the Boston Red Sox. The two Sox are separated by only one game in the loss column, with the Boston team 4.5 games behind the first-place Rays (and playing them six times in September) in the AL East and the Chicago version just 1.5 games ahead of the Twins (who they play three more times) in the AL Central. The wild card? Still up for grabs.

Short version: this is a big series, folks.

So how can the Chicago nine beat my Boston squad? The answer is simple: get to the bullpen.

Yesterday, after Jon Lester spun yet another quality start, blanking the Yankees for six-and-two-thirds innings, Okajima came in with a runner on second. Okajima has not been good with inherited runners this year. He promptly surrendered a game-tying, pinch-hit home run to Jason Giambi, and the Red Sox lost in the bottom of the ninth.

This scenario is, by now, all too familiar to Red Sox fans. And this series against Chicago should present plenty of opportunities for the same.

Each "tock" brings you one second closer to Javier Lopez

Tonight, Daisuke Matsuzaka takes the hill for Boston. While Dice-K has been very good this year (2.98 ERA, 15-2 record), he averages about 5 and two-thirds innings per start and has a 1.50 K/BB. The Sox will be lucky if he gets through the sixth. Tomorrow, the likely starter is minor leaguer David Pauley, in place of the injured Josh Beckett. Pauley isn’t likely to make it past five frames. Sunday, the Sox have Tim Wakefield going, which could go either way. Wake can still cruise through lineups when his knuckler is fluttering, but at 42, he’s a little old to be left out there to labor.

So in at least two of the three contests, all the White Sox will have to do is play the waiting game.

Chicago isn’t particularly renowned for their patience (they’re sort of middle-of-the-pack when it comes to walks), but they’ll be facing Sir Walksalot in the person of Matsuzaka, a Triple-A pitcher in Pauley, and a knuckleballer in Wakefield. If they can lay off any pitch that’s even remotely borderline, they’ll get their fair share of free passes, and they’ll drive up the starters’ pitch counts.

And when the relievers come in, the White Sox won’t have to wait any longer–they can swing for the fences.

See Alejandro’s assessment of Chicago’s key weakness here.

Look we all know that the Royals aren’t that good this year, just as they haven’t been good for about 20 years now. But the Royals are not without some talented players. They have a pretty nice rotation, headed by Gil Meche, Zack Greinke, and Brian Bannister, they have some nifty arms in the bullpen such as Joakim Soria, Ron Mahay, and Leo Nunez, and they have two future star hitters in the lineup in Alex Gordon and Billy Butler.

But it is hard to see how the Royals can ever be very good unless they learn how to take more walks. Currently, the Royals are last in the entire major leagues with 145 walks, and they recently had a string of 38 consective innings, in other words, more than 4 games and nearly 200 plate appearances, without a single Kansas City Royal drawing a walk.

While it is true that in recent years the Angels have proven that you don’t necessarily need to draw a lot of walks to have an effective offense, not drawing walks means you really have to have a very high team batting average, and you also have to run the bases very effectively and efficiently to make the most of the fewer runners that you have. These are two things the Angels do very well, but the Royals would be well advised to try to include the ability to take walks as part of the organization’s hitting philosophy.

Otherwise they are just not going to win many games.

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