Ace in waiting? Mets optimistic about Perez's future

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You can't say, this early into the season, that the Mets' fortunes lie entirely with Oliver Perez. You can't say, really any time, that it's all on one guy.

But this much is undeniable, even now: If Perez can pitch the rest of the season as he did his first game, if he can continue to build on what he rediscovered late last year and throughout this spring -- the kind of stuff that rekindles the promise many people saw in him in 2004 -- then things will be much easier on the Mets than most people think. And the Mets will be much harder to beat.

He's a strange case, Perez is. Tom Glavine, maybe the only starter the Mets can really count on -- at least for the time being -- calls Perez's pitches "electric." He says that Perez, stuff-wise, is as good as just about anybody in the National League. Back in '04, nobody would have argued with him. Pitching for the Pirates back then, Perez struck out almost 11 hitters per nine innings, the best mark in the league that year.

"And he was wild," says the Braves' Andruw Jones, "which made him even more effective. You never knew what he was going to throw, or where he was going to throw it."

But then came '05, and things began to unravel. In June, after a rough outing in St. Louis, Perez walked into the clubhouse in a snit, kicked a laundry cart and broke a big toe, sending him to the disabled list. He missed all of July and August, made only 20 starts that year and finished with a 5.85 ERA. Last year with the Pirates, he began the season 2-10 with a 6.63 ERA, losing his last five starts before being traded to the Mets along with reliever Roberto Hernandez for outfielder Xavier Nady.

Perez, after looking so untouchable in '04, was suddenly a reclamation project at 25 years old. With the Mets in '06, he finished 1-3 in seven starts with a 6.38 ERA. He was, suddenly, a huge reclamation project.

Still, the Mets believed. They had to. With Pedro Martinez on the disabled list and nowhere else to turn, the Mets forced Perez into action in the NL Championship Series against the Cardinals. Something, somewhere, somehow clicked. He started Game 4 and got the win, and very nearly pitched the Mets into the World Series in Game 7, going six innings, striking out four, giving up four hits and allowing just one run in the team's eventual 3-1 loss to the Cardinals.

That start proved a lot to Mets' fans. The Mets' decisionmakers, who always wanted to believe, might finally have been convinced when Perez, during an otherwise businesslike spring, blew away the Red Sox in an exhibition game on March 15, striking out nine in five innings -- including both Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz twice.

"The playoff game was just scratching the surface," Mets pitching coach Rick Peterson told the Bergen County Record. "The game he pitched against Boston, that's the game. That's his recipe for success."

Some in the organization now see Perez as a potential ace when Glavine and Martinez finally step aside. And the young left-hander did nothing to dispute that with his first start this season last Friday, giving up one run and five hits to the Braves over seven innings in an 11-1 Mets' win.

"I think," Perez said after the game, "last year I was thinking too much."