Ollie Jekyll and Ollie Hyde....

....strikes again. Or should I say, "strike" again, since syntax-wise, I suppose the latter is the correct verbiage, or so the "and" in the title of this post would indicate.

Anyway, enough with the English lesson. The REAL point of this post is, of course, the Two Natures of Oliver Perez. Both of which we actually saw yesterday; one of which ended up winning out, causing Ollie Hyde to give up enough runs in few enough innings that the Mets, realistically, had little or no chance to win the game, even though the offense pretty much gave it a valiant effort.

Look, we knew when we re-signed Ollie in the off-season that we were actually giving the money and the contract to TWO DIFFERENT GUYS. So if you didn't know better, you'd think; okay, we're getting two for one. But, Mets fans, here's the rub -- we're getting Ollie Jekyll and Ollie Hyde, and we never know which one we're going to get from month to month, week to week, game to game, and even inning to inning, as we saw yesterday.

Now one can argue that a big deal can't be made about yesterday because it is, after all, Ollie's first start of the season, made in pretty lousy weather, after an abominably and ridiculously long spring training, and pitching in general is pretty up and down in these cold, early season months. And we did know what we were signing on for, after all.

But man, I don't know about you, but doesn't this just grate on your last nerve, already, at this point? As Yogi Berra once said, "Ninety percent of the game is half mental," and I'm beginning to believe that Oliver Perez is, indeed, half mental.

Ninety percent of the time.