Yay, I'm gonna cream my pants!!

Tonight ladies and gentlemen could be one of the best pitching matchups of the season. And it's not the highly anticipated matchup of Rodrigo Lopez v. Braden Looper or the thriller John Danks v. Boof Bonser. This matchup will be none other than Oliver Perez for the PondScum Mets and Tim Lincecum for the Blimphead Giants. On the same night that John Smoltz and Ben Sheets will duel each other (pending Ben Sheets inevitable season ending injury), if you're a baseball fan, you should turn your attention to these two young bright stars of pitching:

OLIVER PEREZ:
6-3
2.54 ERA
56.2 IP
53K
"Ollie" has been a mancrush (nongay) of mine since he burst into the league in 2002 with the Padres at age 20. He's a posterchild for "Million Dollar Arm" and "10 cent head." He has 2 ++ pitches, a 4 seam fastball that tops out at 97, and a Christina Aguilera vagina slider (yes, it's that filthy). He's also been developing a change-up of late, but that's still in the works. Ollie has had as much an up and down career as any 25 year old in the majors has. He has already undergone 2 "resurrections" in pitching, in 2004 and in 2007, and some changes mechanically. There's a wonderful article at BaseballThinkFactory about some of the changes that Ollie has undergone mechanically from 2004-2007. He is a head case, so he needs a good pitching coach to keep him straight, and I think he has found that with Rick Peterson and the Mets. Peterson can probably best be remembered for helping produce the A's trio of Hudson, Mulder, and Zito. He is one of the top pitching coaches in the game and relies on video analysis and his degree in psychology. Let me tell you, that degree has probably been put to good use on Perez, who after a loss to the Cardinals in 2005, attempted to kick a laundry cart's ass, but failed miserably, resulting in Perez suffering a broken toe and missing 2 months. Perez needs to learn to vent his anger into things that have "give" to them, like a Yorkshire Terrier or a small child. When Perez has it together, it is impressive to watch, so far this season, he has regained his surprising 2004 form where he struck out 239 in 196 innings, and held a 2.98 ERA. The key to his resurgence, can be seen in a rise (although not '04 level) in his K/G (8.9), and an all-time low for BB/G (3.0) and HR/F (Homeruns per flyball) at 10.2%. The last stat has been crucial to Perez as he is almost strictly a Flyball or Strikeout pitcher. He had a disturbingly high HR/F in 05 of 20%!!. What we saw with Ollie during his bad stretch: 05-06, was a significant drop in K/G, (from 11.9 to 7.9 and 6.5) a rise in BB/G (almost 2 full walks). For a flyball pitcher that is a terrible mixture, and it showed in 05 and 06 when he posted ERA's of high 5's and even mid 6's in 06. Whatever it was that Peterson told Ollie when he came to New York, we saw the Jekyll/Hyde transformation come almost immediately. Which tells us this: The Pittsburgh Pirates are a completely inept organization in that they held a prize arm in Perez for three years and could only ruin it, now this could be blamed on several people, I choose to blame Spin Williams, pitching coach on McClendon's staff who apparently did NOTHING as the next sure thing drifted into mediocrity. Also Jim Colborn obviously couldn't cure Perez's ills either when he was brought in with Tracy in 06. Furthermore Dave Littlefield wins an award for idiocy in giving up on Perez so early in his career when the Pirates obviously aren't dedicated to winning. But that's neither here or there as Ollie has turned it around drastically and is once again an elite pitcher. At 25, I expect him to mature greatly under Peterson and the great run support that the Mets will give, he's a prime candidate for 20 wins this year. I firmly believe with Peterson's tutelage, Ollie can become the NL version of Johan Santana.

TIM LINCECUM
The pride of the University of Washington has been my other (nongay) mancrush since he was drafted by the Giants last year. I still can't get over how much the damn kid looks like Cameron from Ferris Bueller. Lincecum is pitching efficiency at its finest. He gets incredible power out of his 5'11 160lb. frame. He often grazes the high 90's with his fastball, he throws a nasty changeup that tails down and away to a lefty, and an even nastier power curve that has wicked late action. BaseballThinkFactory also wrote another excellent article about Lincecum and his odd pitching motion that results in a LOT of arm speed from such a small body. His efficient motion is what I believe is the start of a new trend in pitching that we are seeing with pitchers like Roy Oswalt, where arm speed and eliminating wasted motion are stressed, as opposed to the traditional "Tall and Fall" that has been so prevalent(see Jason Isringhausen). This is also what you see in Oliver Perez, Peterson removed a lot of wasted motion from his delivery and by that, made his delivery much faster to the plate. The longer your delivery time, the more room for error that exists. TLinc is just about the polar opposite from a Mark Redman or Mark Mulder, he gets to the plate very fast and there is little chance for extra mechanical flaws to appear. That's why I think he is going to stay consistent at the impressive level he's been at:
over 4 starts:
2-0
3.08 ERA
26.3 IP
25K

It's a very small sample size, I know, but the numbers he put up in 5 starts at AAA Fresno are just plain gawdy:
4-0
0.29 ERA
31 IP
46K
He had a rough debut against the Phillies, but pitched well against a good hitting Rockies team at Coors (7 IP 2ER 6K) and really hit his stride in his last 2 starts against the Astros. Dueling Roy Oswalt over both starts, he turned in 15 Innings 2 ER 14K 7H and 2BB. When I watch Timmy, like Ollie, there's just something special about him, he just feels like the next big one. He feels similar to Pedro Martinez, not only in size but in pure stuff. When I watch these two tonight, I won't help but think that I could be looking back at this meeting as the start of another Gibson/Koufax-type duel. These two definitely have the material to become that, it's only a matter of maturing as pitchers, which they could be close. Gametime: 7:10 ET, don't miss it.