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He's always been a fighter.  He has a couple problems:
1) His way of being a fighter and not giving up looks like bland-faced sweating to a lot of people. Michael Jordan had a GREAT AngryFace.  His AngryFace made grown men wet themselves. Erasmo has more of a Japanese disposition out there, blank-faced, searching for zen in angry moments.  He's a fighter, I promise - I've seen enough of him getting worthless strike zones in the minors or pitching at altitude where his changeup doesn't dive and his curve and slider are useless to know that.  Being a sweater doesn't make him less warrior-like. His problem yesterday was the next problem.
2) Without his changeup, Erasmo is bringing a knife to a gunfight. Erasmo has two weapons: control, and his changeup.  When he has both those things working, he's nasty.  When he only has his changeup but is missing his fastball control he can gut it out.  Yesterday he didn't have either.  As Matt noted, he had TWO (2) swings and misses all game. When you can't throw pitches where you want them AND you can't change speeds to make people swing through stuff in the zone, it's gonna be a long day (or rather, a short one on the mound full of anguish and annoyance).
We watched Moyer have long days.  Erasmo's need is not to get more of a warrior mentality - how do you go to war with a dull butterknife against the As? Especially when your pitching coach walks out, tells you to throw a strike and let your defense handle it... and then that pitch sails over the wall. Erasmo has to figure out how to gut out 5 innings and keep his team in the game when he has nothing.  Minor leaguers would bail him out.  That doesn't happen as often in the bigs.
So until he figures that out, the problem with Erasmo comes down to this: how often is he gonna go out there with nerf weapons against the real thing?
# of times Erasmo hasn’t gone 5 innings in a start: 6-of-23
# of quality starts: 11-of-23
As long as he keeps a 2-to-1 ratio in that, he can compete for the #5 spot in the rotation. Now, to be fair, I believe Beavan kept a 2:1 or better there too when he was starting - it was his 5 innings of 5 run ball that chewed us up. Can Erasmo limit runs on his mediocre days? I believe so, but we'll need him to if he's gonna get that pitching slot.
Erasmo has the ability to save the pen even when he's having a bad day, because he won't be using a lot of pitches to be terrible.  He can go deeper and eat his own bad day rather than making the team suffer... assuming we're out of it.  That ability is less useful if we're gonna be in every game.
Erasmo needs his better stuff next game, at home. I expect him to have it. If not, well... Taijuan's back soon. ;-)
~G