The D-backs have signed lefty Oliver Perez to a minor league contract, Perez himself tells Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic (Twitter thread). Perez is a client of the Boras Corporation.
The deal with Arizona represents a change of plans for the veteran Perez, who’d previously been slated to play with los Toros de Tijuana in the Mexican League for the upcoming season. Perez announced that he planned to retire after spending the season with the Toros, although that signing and the announcement by Perez came while the MLB lockout was still in place. For now, Perez will shift his focus and instead take aim at an incredible twentieth MLB season.
Perez, 40, has spent the past four seasons in Cleveland, where he’s pitched to a combined 2.57 ERA in 94 2/3 frames of relief work. Perez, however, only tossed 3 2/3 innings in the Majors last year. He spent the rest of the season pitching with that same Toros club for which he’d been planning to play while the lockout was still ongoing.
At this point, the veteran Perez’s track record largely speaks for itself. After a roller-coaster run as a starting pitcher from 2002-10, Perez moved to the bullpen with the 2012 Mariners and embarked on what has essentially amounted to a second career as a reliever. Working for a long time as the quintessential lefty specialist, Perez has made 489 relief appearances and totaled 350 innings of 3.42 ERA ball since that 2012 campaign began.
The implementation of the three-batter minimum wasn’t a great development for pitchers with specialized skill sets of this nature, but Perez had no trouble getting right-handed opponents out in 2020. It was an admittedly short sample, and his career numbers tell another story, but Perez held righties to a .229/.342/.286 slash in 41 plate appearances that year and was similarly effective in another dozen tries last year.
Could’ve been an option for the Mets if the fans didn’t hate him so much
I’m a Met fan since they had Lee Mazzilli, Frank Taveras, Claudell Washington, Doug Flynn, and a young rookie named Mookie Wilson among others, but I don’t hold any grudges against Ollie Perez. I have nothing against him returning.
Man did he throw peas when first came up. I remember just watching how small the ball looked leaving his hand.
I didn’t know hookers make that much.
I agree w Phenomenalajs (and I go back even before Maz). Ollie remade himself as a top notch LOOGY, and was a valuable pen arm.
Besides, it wasn’t his fault that the Mets didn’t score in the bottom of the 6th after THE CATCH, or that Hellman couldn’t get Rolen or Yadi!
It’s water under the bridge for me but a lot of fans haven’t forgiven him for his refusal to go down to the minors or move to the pen while he was struggling. The issue was attitude, not a particular game or play.
Oli has been around forever.
Retire or potentially make a few million more? Hmm… it’s definitely a marketing ploy by certain players. Charlie Morton being another one.
Publicly Planning To Retire = I only want to play for at least a certain amount of money.
His decision. So what? If he has the skill and there is demand, what’s wrong w that?
Random detail — In 2004 he threw 196 innings of 2.98 ERA ball, good for 53rd most innings in MLB that year, 59 behind the leader. Last year that would have been 5th, only 17.1 behind the leader.
The art of pitching is behind us which is a shame because baseball would benefit greatly with big time pitching matchups like the olden days of 2004. I miss seeing pitchers go toe to toe with each other for almost the entire game. It’s funny bc the guys hanging on from that generation (Scherzer, Degrom, Verlander, Kershaw) are generally the only ones who can go through a lineup a 3rd time.
0.00 ERA last year is hard to beat.
Career earnings of $65 mil is too.
With a 178 ERA+ the last 4 years combined, one more go at it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Loved watching Ollie as a youngster in SD; he deserves a proper retirement party and hope he has a nice ’22!
I wish I threw left-handed…or had taught my son to throw left-handed…
He’ll probably make that bullpen too.
Now the debate: by spurning the Toros to sign with the Diamondbacks, did Ollie give himself a better or worse chance of making the World Series?
Dude was born the day before me.