New York Mets Finally Cut Ties With Oliver Perez, Who Joins Washington

Update: Less than a day after being released by the Mets, Perez has found a new home. The Washington Nationals have signed Perez to a minor-league contract.

So the team that has never developed any pitching is now going to try to turn the biggest mental midget in baseball around? This has zero chance of working out.

Even when this experiment inevitably fails, it won’t cost the Nationals anything as the Mets are paying Perez’s $12 million salary in 2011.

Original Post, 2/22/2011: The new regime in Flushing is doing their best to rid themselves of the stench otherwise known as the Omar Minaya era in New York.

First they released Luis Castillo on Friday and now they have rid themselves of Oliver Perez. The Mets released Perez on Friday and will eat the remaining $12 million on his contract.

This was such a no-brainer move by the Mets, it should have happened a year ago.

Actually, it should have never happened because the Mets should have never re-signed Perez in the first place.

Much like Castillo, the Mets gave Perez a multi-year deal when no other team was willing to even give him more than one year.

Perez’s agent, Scott Boras, compared Perez to Sandy Koufax at the time. The only Sandy Perez resembled was Ramblin’ Sandy Pitnick (an obscure Christopher Guest reference).

Since the Mets re-signed Perez, he went 3-9 with a 6.81 ERA with 100 walks (not a typo) and 99 K’s in 112 innings. The low point of the Perez deal was when he refused to accept a minor-league assignment last year.

Yes, it was in his contract to reserve the right to not accept the assignment, but that one single act showed how much he could not care less about improving himself and helping his team.

There are some moves that are made based on a player’s contract, and there are some moves that are made for the betterment of the clubhouse. This move was for both reasons.

Based on his overall poor attitude towards things, I would be shocked if any team took a chance on Perez.

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