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In 15 starts last season, Perez had a 6.78 ERA and .186 WHIP over 74 1/3 innings. He was much more successful after he was moved to the bullpen, pitching to a 2.45 ERA and 1.27 WHIP, though that was just a sample of 11 innings.
Perez was once among the top prospects in the game, topping out at No. 17 on Baseball America's Top 100 Prospect list. He made his major league debut as a 21-year-old, and his relative youth among free agents is one aspect that makes him unique.
Perez has never been able to overpower hitters, as his career 5.5 K/9 indicates, but he's a groundball machine. His career groundball rate is an excellent 51.1 percent. There were only two qualified starting pitchers who topped that mark in 2018.
Still, that low strikeout rate really limits his upside. That's always been curious to me, because it's not like Perez is a soft-tosser. His average fastball velocity was 92.7 mph last season, not far off from Jose Berrios and Kyle Gibson while being comfortably ahead of Jake Odorizzi.
But, of course, there's more to getting strikeouts than just velocity. Perez had the eighth-lowest swinging strike rate among the 173 pitchers who logged at least 80 innings in 2018. The changeup is considered his best pitch. Here's a look:
https://gfycat.com/shadowycheerfulflycatcher
Despite the fact that he's pitched in a pretty hitter-friendly environment over his career, Perez actually has better numbers at home than on the road over his career. Still, maybe there's a case to be made that he's a good change of scenery candidate.
Taking a look at Perez's pitch usages over his career, it doesn't appear anybody with the Rangers ever really pressed him to tinker around. The biggest difference you see is that he threw his sinker more last year.
Just looking at that, I wonder what things might look like if Perez threw fewer fastballs and increased the usage of his changeup and slider. Just a thought.
So it seems the three main positives when it comes to Perez are his youth, the fact that he's left-handed and his ability to induce ground balls. It'll be interested to hear what the financial terms of the deal are and how the front office envisions him fitting into the big picture. The 40-man roster is full, so we'll also be keeping an eye out on who will be exposed to the waiver wire once the deal becomes official.
UPDATE: Jon Heyman is reporting the deal is for "about" $3.5 million. We may not know how exactly that's structured until the deal becomes official. It's worth noting that what was originally reported as Blake Parker's deal ($3.2 million) ended up being quite different in the end ($1.8 million plus incentives).
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