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Francisco Perez

A’s Re-Sign Francisco Perez To Minor League Deal

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The A’s recently re-signed lefty Francisco Pérez on a minor league contract, according to Matt Eddy of Baseball America. Oakland also brought back right-hander Aaron Brooks on a non-roster pact.

Pérez has the more recent big league experience of the duo. He pitched in a career-high 17 games for Oakland late last season. Pérez allowed 12 runs (11 of them earned) over 16 2/3 innings. He punched out 14 while issuing eight walks. Oakland kept him on the 40-man roster for the majority of the winter but outrighted him a few weeks back to make room for the Alex Wood signing. Pérez chose minor league free agency before quickly circling back on a new contract.

The 6’2″ southpaw has appeared at the MLB level in each of the last three seasons. He suited up with Cleveland in 2021 and Washington two years ago before making the move to Oakland. The opportunities come largely on account of the swing-and-miss upside he has shown in the minors. Pérez has punched out nearly 30% of opponents over parts of three seasons in Triple-A. He nevertheless owns a pedestrian 4.42 ERA at that level, reflecting significant control issues. Pérez has issued free passes to more than 15% of batters faced in his Triple-A career.

Brooks, 34 in April, pitched parts of three seasons at the major league level in an Oakland uniform. He has appeared in five big league campaigns overall, throwing 180 innings with a 6.55 ERA. Brooks last pitched in the majors with the Cardinals in 2022. He spent the ’23 campaign in Triple-A with the Padres, working to a 4.95 ERA over 63 2/3 frames as a long reliever.

Francisco Perez Elects Free Agency

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February 9: Pérez elected free agency, according to the transaction tracker.

February 1: The A’s have sent reliever Francisco Pérez outright off the 40-man roster, according to the club’s transaction log at MLB.com. That clears a spot for veteran starter Alex Wood, who agreed to terms over the weekend. The A’s still have not officially announced Wood’s signing.

Pérez has pitched at the MLB level in each of the last three seasons. He has suited up for a different team all three years, bouncing from Cleveland to Washington to Oakland. The southpaw joined the A’s on a minor league deal in April and was selected onto the MLB club in the middle of August.

Despite not reaching the majors until late into the year, he tallied a personal-high 16 2/3 innings through 17 games down the stretch. Pérez allowed 12 runs (11 earned) with 14 strikeouts and eight walks. He owns a 5.91 ERA in 31 career big league appearances. The 26-year-old has pitched to a 4.42 earned run average over 106 innings at the Triple-A level. While he has punched out almost 30% of opponents at the top minor league level, he’s undercut it with a 15.3% walk rate.

Pérez has cleared outright waivers once before in his career. As a result, he’ll have the ability to test free agency. If he accepts the minor league assignment, he could get a non-roster invite to Spring Training with Oakland. Otherwise, he’d look for a minor league opportunity elsewhere.

A’s Select Francisco Pérez

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The Athletics announced that they have selected the contract of left-hander Francisco Pérez, with lefty Sam Long optioned in a corresponding move. They already had a vacancy on the 40-man roster, which is now full.

Pérez, 26, signed a minor league deal with the A’s in April and has been working in the minors since then. Between Double-A and Triple-A, he’s tossed 40 2/3 innings, allowing 4.43 earned runs per nine. His 31.2% strikeout rate is quite strong but his 11.8% walk rate is on the high side.

Prior to this season, he was able to throw 15 1/3 innings in the majors, split between Cleveland and Washington in 2021 and 2022. He currently has a career ERA of 5.87 in that small sample. The Nats passed him through waivers after last year, which led him to the open market but he’s now back in the big leagues.

He still has an option season remaining and won’t reach one year of service time here in 2023, allowing the A’s to cheaply retain him as a depth piece with roster flexibility for years to come, as long as he continues to justify his 40-man roster spot.

A’s, Francisco Perez Agree To Minor League Deal

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The Athletics have signed reliever Francisco Pérez to a minor league contract, according to Chris Hilburn-Trenkle of Baseball America. The left-hander had been released from a non-roster deal with the Nationals during Spring Training.

Pérez has pitched in the majors in each of the last two seasons. He debuted with Cleveland late in the 2021 campaign, appearing in four games. The Nationals snagged him off waivers at the end of that year. Pérez held his 40-man roster spot for a season and got into 10 MLB contests with Washington last year. The Nationals ran him through outright waivers at the end of last season.

In 14 career appearances, the Dominican Republic native has tallied 15 1/3 innings of 10-run ball. He’s issued 12 walks while punching out 12 hitters in that rather brief look. He’s leaned heavily on a four-seam fastball that averages around 93 MPH while using a mid-80s slider as his top secondary offering.

Pérez spent the bulk of the 2022 season with the Nationals’ Triple-A affiliate in Rochester. He worked 46 2/3 innings over 45 outings for the Red Wings, allowing a 4.82 ERA. The 25-year-old punched out a strong 29.9% of batters faced at the top minor league level, though he also dished out free passes at a huge 15.7% clip.

The Nats were sufficiently intrigued by the bat-missing numbers in Triple-A to re-sign Pérez to a minor league deal over the winter. He only got into two Spring Training contests before being reassigned to minor league camp and subsequently released. He now joins the third organization of his career, where he’ll presumably head to Triple-A in search of a new opportunity.

Oakland has a pair of left-handers in the MLB bullpen: Sam Moll and Richard Lovelady. They recently turned to Hogan Harris for his MLB debut in relief, though he’s worked as a starting pitcher in the minors. The only other left-handed reliever who’d have a 40-man roster spot is Kirby Snead but he’s on the 60-day injured list after suffering a shoulder strain in Spring Training. Former Marlin Jake Fishman is at Triple-A Las Vegas as a non-roster depth pitcher but landed on the minor league IL two weeks ago.

Nationals Sign Anthony Banda, Francisco Perez To Minor League Deals

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The Nationals announced three minor league deals today, one of which was the previously-reported deal with infielder Michael Chavis. The other two were for left-handers Anthony Banda and Francisco Pérez. All three players will receive invitations to major league Spring Training.

Banda, 29, has seen sporadic major league time in each of the past six seasons, suiting up for the Diamondbacks, Rays, Mets, Pirates, Blue Jays and Yankees. Over the past two seasons, he’s thrown 60 1/3 innings with a 5.37 ERA while striking out 21.5% of batters faced and walking 9% of them. Those peripherals are fairly close to league average and it’s possible he wasn’t quite as bad as that unsightly ERA might suggest. A .387 batting average on balls in play in that stretch probably hurt him, as his 4.74 FIP and 4.11 SIERA suggested he deserved better.

Banda is out of options and has bounced around to various teams via small transactions in recent years. He began 2022 with the Pirates before getting designated for assignment and traded to the Jays for cash. The Jays also gave him the DFA treatment shortly thereafter, which was followed by a minor league deal with the Mariners, a major league deal with the Yankees and an outright. If he can make his way onto Washington’s roster and have some good results, he has just over two years of service time and can be retained via arbitration for the foreseeable future.

Pérez, 25, has spent most of his career in Cleveland’s system, with that club selecting him onto their 40-man roster in 2021. He only made four big league appearances that year but tossed 53 innings between Double-A and Triple-A with a 1.86 ERA and 38.1% strikeout rate. His walks were certainly high at 13.5% but it was an encouraging season nonetheless. He was claimed off waivers by the Nationals after that campaign, but things didn’t go as smooth in 2022. He posted a 7.27 ERA over 10 big league appearances and a 4.82 ERA over 45 Triple-A appearances. He still got strikeouts on 29.9% of Triple-A batters faced, but he walked 15.7% of them and also 18.8% of those he faced in the majors.

Pérez was outrighted at season’s end and elected free agency but has now returned to the Nats without taking up a roster spot. He still has an option year remaining and can be shuffled between the majors and minors if he earns his way back onto the 40-man. He also has less than a year of service time and could be controlled for years to come if the Nats so choose.

The Nationals currently have four left-handers on their 40-man roster, with Patrick Corbin and MacKenzie Gore both likely ticketed for rotation jobs. That leaves Jose Ferrer and Matt Cronin as the two lefty options for the bullpen. Both of them were just added to the club’s roster in November to protect against selection in the Rule 5 draft, meaning neither has any MLB experience. Banda and Pérez give the club some more-experienced options for southpaws to plug into their bullpen for the upcoming campaign.

Nationals Outright Tres Barrera, Francisco Perez

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The Nationals cleared a pair of 40-man roster spots, sending catcher Tres Barrera and reliever Francisco Pérez through waivers. After reinstating all players from the injured list as required, Washington’s 40-man roster count sits at 39.

Barrera, a former 6th-round draftee, has been a depth catcher in Washington. He’s appeared at the big league level in three of the last four years, tallying 162 plate appearances. He’s a career .231/.317/.315 hitter with a pair of home runs in 51 MLB games. The righty-swinging backstop posted a .254/.338/.424 line over 206 trips to the plate with Triple-A Rochester this year.

Pérez joined the organization last offseason off waivers from the Guardians. He pitched in 10 MLB games, allowing seven runs with nine walks and seven strikeouts in 8 2/3 innings. The 25-year-old spent most of the season in Rochester, appearing 45 times and soaking up 46 2/3 frames. He posted a 4.82 ERA for the Red Wings, striking out almost 30% of opponents but battling huge walk troubles. He’ll have the right to refuse the assignment and elect minor league free agency.

Nationals Promote Luis Garcia

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The Nationals announced Wednesday that they’ve recalled infielder Luis Garcia from Triple-A Rochester and placed shortstop Alcides Escobar on the 10-day injured list due to a strained right hamstring. Manager Dave Martinez tells reporters that Garcia will be the everyday shortstop moving forward (Twitter link via Jesse Dougherty of the Washington Post). Washington also optioned righty Francisco Perez to Rochester and recalled southpaw Evan Lee from Double-A Harrisburg for what will be his Major League debut. Talk Nats first reported that both Garcia and Lee were headed to the big leagues (Twitter links).

Garcia, who turned 22 last month, has too much big league experience under his belt to technically qualify as a “prospect” anymore, but he’s still a key young player whom the organization hopes to install as a core player. Signed as a 16-year-old amateur back in 2016, Garcia was in the big leagues by 20 years of age and has already accumulated 386 Major League plate appearances, albeit with an underwhelming .254/.285/.395 slash line to show for it.

However, Garcia was a consensus top-100 prospect heading into both the 2019 and 2020 seasons, and his work so far in Triple-A illustrates the reason evaluators have been so bullish on the young middle infielder. Through his first 42 games (193 plate appearances), Garcia is hitting .314/.368/.531 with eight home runs, six doubles, four triples and a stolen base. His 17.6% strikeout rate is well below the current average, and he’s drawn walks at a respectable 8.3% clip as well.

It’s the second straight season of huge Triple-A production for Garcia, who hit .303/.371/.599 in 159 Triple-A plate appearances a year ago. That didn’t translate into big league success when he tallied 70 games in 2021, but he’d hardly be the player to struggle in the Majors at such a young age before piecing it together as he continues to develop.

It’s easy to argue that the Nationals should’ve had Garcia in the Majors awhile ago. Escobar, one of several veteran minor league signees on whom the Nats have relied in the infield this year, hit just .220/.264/.288 prior to his IL placement. Maikel Franco is fourth on the team in plate appearances despite a .258/.284/.376 output, though the magnitude of his role is due in no small part to Carter Kieboom’s Tommy John surgery. Dee Strange-Gordon has managed a .315/.315/.370 output in 54 trips to the plate, but his most recent productive MLB season came back in 2017.

Whether this was the plan or not, it’s worth pointing out that enough time has passed that Garcia can no longer reach two full years of Major League service time this year. He entered the 2022 campaign with one year and 37 days of service time, meaning he needed 135 days on the active roster or Major League injured list to reach two full years. As of today, there are 126 days remaining on the regular-season calendar. Had Garcia reached two years of service in 2022, he could have potentially been eligible for free agency after the 2026 season. The earliest he can reach the open market now is post-2027.

Of course, all of that is dependent on whether Garcia is able to solidify himself at the Major League level, which he has thus far been unable to do despite multiple auditions. Had the Nats truly been concerned about his free-agent trajectory, they probably wouldn’t have fast-tracked him to the big leagues and let him accrue a full year of service before he even turned 22.

As for the 24-year-old Lee, he’ll be tabbed to start this afternoon’s game against the division-leading Mets. He’s had a nice start in Harrisburg this year, pitching to a 3.60 ERA with a strong 29.4% strikeout rate but a more problematic 11.9% walk rate. MLB.com ranks Lee 17th among Nats farmhands, while Baseball America lists him 20th in the system. Both scouting reports on Lee praise his low-90s heater and a potentially plus curveball while noting that his lack of a third strong offering creates some risk that he’ll eventually land in the bullpen. Lee was a two-way player at the University of Arkansas and is thus still relatively new to full-time pitching, so there’s perhaps a bit more room for development than one would expect out of most soon-to-be 25-year-old pitchers.

Nationals Place Sean Doolittle On Injured List

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The Nationals announced today that lefty Sean Doolittle has been placed on the 10-day injured list with a left elbow sprain. Outfielder Donovan Casey was also optioned to Triple-A Rochester with lefties Sam Clay and Francisco Perez being recalled to take the open spots on the active roster.

Doolittle’s season was off to a blazing start but will now be halted by this setback. In his first 5 1/3 innings of the campaign, he’s yet to allow a run, while only surrendering a single hit, no walks, while racking up six strikeouts. Doolittle told reporters, including Mark Zuckerman of MASNsports.com and Jesse Dougherty of The Washington Post, that he first felt something last week but that it got worse in his outing against Arizona yesterday. Surgery is not being recommended right now, with the plan being to reevaluate in about ten days. That timeline suggests Doolittle won’t be able to return after a minimum stay on the IL.

Clay and Perez each made their MLB debuts last year, Clay with Washington and Perez with Cleveland. The Nats claimed Perez off waivers from the Guardians in November. Clay, 28, has thrown 5 2/3 scoreless innings in Triple-A so far this year, while Perez, 24, has 5 scoreless. With Doolittle on the shelf, they will be the club’s only two lefty options in the bullpen.

Nationals Claim Francisco Perez Off Waivers From Guardians

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The Nationals announced they successfully claimed left-handed pitcher Francisco Perez off waivers from the Guardians. The Nats also announced their decision to outright right-handed pitcher Kyle McGowin to Triple-A.

Cleveland selected Perez to make his big league debut in early August. He ultimately got into four games, tossing 6 2/3 frames of relief and allowing three runs. During his brief MLB time, Perez relied mostly on a fastball that averaged just under 93 MPH and a low-80s slider.

That’s not the most overpowering raw stuff, but the 24-year-old posted dominant numbers between the Guardians’ Double-A and Triple-A affiliates this past season. Over 53 combined innings at the minors’ top two levels, he worked to a 1.87 ERA, punching out an incredible 38.1% of opposing hitters in the process. Perez also still has a pair of minor league option years remaining, so the Nats can shuttle him between the majors and minors for the next couple seasons if he sticks on their 40-man roster.

McGowin’s tenure with the Nats could come to a close after today’s outright. The 29-year-old has appeared in the bigs in each of the past four seasons, with his 30 frames of 4.20 ERA/3.87 SIERA ball in 2021 his most extensive action. McGowan will have the right to elect minor league free agency.

Indians Select Francisco Perez

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The Indians announced this afternoon they’ve selected the contract of left-hander Francisco Pérez. First baseman Bobby Bradley is landing on the 10-day injured list after missing the club’s past few games with a left knee injury. Cleveland already had two vacancies on the 40-man roster, so no additional move was needed in that regard.

Pérez is in line to make his big league debut after spending seven years in the minors. He signed as an amateur free agent out of the Dominican Republic during the 2014-15 international signing period and has spent his entire career in the Indians organization. Pérez began his career as a starting pitcher but has worked exclusively out of the bullpen this season.

While Pérez has never appeared on an organizational top prospects list at Baseball America or FanGraphs, he’s been nothing short of dominant in the high minors this year. The 24-year-old has worked 45 1/3 innings of 1.19 ERA ball split between Double-A Akron and Triple-A Columbus. Along the way, Pérez has punched out a whopping 40% of batters faced, although he has walked an elevated 11.7% of opponents. That’s a new development for Pérez, who had posted average or better walk rates at every level until this season.

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