A Second Act in Texas Has Made Martín Pérez a First-Time All-Star

As free-agent signings go, you could be forgiven for having missed Martín Pérez’s return to the Rangers. His agreement to a one-year, $4 million deal happened amid a flurry of signings in mid-March, just after the lockout ended, and the transaction even slipped through the cracks in our coverage. That will happen for a guy who’s been knocked around while bouncing around, but in his return to Texas, the 31-year-old lefty has pitched his way onto the AL All-Star team, making him the longest-tenured major leaguer from among this year’s first-time honorees.

The honor is well-deserved. In 106 innings thus far, Pérez has pitched to a 2.72 ERA (71 ERA-) and 3.07 FIP (76 FIP-). His FIP ranks fifth in the AL, and his ERA and 2.3 WAR both rank sixth. Already, all of those numbers represent career bests, including his WAR, which matches his total from 2016. At that time, Pérez was just 25 years old but already in the post-hype phase of his career.

The Rangers originally signed Pérez out of Venezuela on July 2, 2007, via a $580,000 signing bonus. As a 17-year-old he held his own against college draftees in the Northwest League in 2008 and made prospect lists in each of the next five seasons as the team looked to his arrival, hopeful that he could help further the Rangers’ run after back-to-back pennants in 2010 and ’11. The hype was intense. As Jamey Newburg, who has covered Rangers’ prospects dating back to the late 1990s, wrote for D Magazine in June, after splitting his 2009 season between Low-A and Double-A stops, “[H]e flashed unnatural confidence for a teenager, a willingness to throw any pitch in any count. Baseball America tabbed him as the 17th-best prospect in baseball, third among left-handed pitchers (behind Brian Matusz and Madison Bumgarner and ahead of Aroldis Chapman). His feel for the craft and unassuming build triggered comparisons to the likes of Ron Guidry and Johan Santana.” No pressure, kid!

Pérez debuted as a 21-year-old in 2012 and spent part or all of the next six seasons with the team, but the hopes that he would develop into a homegrown ace faded as he battled injuries (including 2014 Tommy John surgery) and a hitter-friendly ballpark. In his time in Texas, he pitched to a 4.63 ERA (103 ERA-) and 4.44 FIP (103 FIP-), totaling 8.6 WAR. The Rangers signed him to a four-year, $12.5 million extension in November 2013, one that included club options for the ’18–20 seasons, but after picking up the first one, they had seen enough, declining his $7.5 million club option for 2019 and paying him a $750,000 buyout.

After reaching free agency, Perez signed modest one-year deals with the Twins and Red Sox, the latter twice; each of those deals included a club option that the team subsequently rejected as well, with Boston giving him what amounted to a 23% pay cut to return for 2020. Though his nomadic stretch began with a very solid first half for Minnesota in 2019, his second-half fade sent him packing. Last year, he pitched his way out of the Red Sox rotation and into its bullpen for the final two months of the season. For those three years, he pitched to a 4.88 ERA (106 ERA-) and 4.75 FIP (107 FIP-) and 2.8 WAR, with his 2021 numbers — a 4.74 ERA (105 ERA-) and 4.82 FIP (114 ERA-) in 114 innings — suggesting that he would be in for more of the same in 2022, though not necessarily with a contender.

To the Rangers, even those unimpressive 2021 numbers represented an improvement upon most of their returning options. While bigger names such as Clayton Kershaw and Carlos Rodón spurned the team’s advances to sign with contenders, just before the lockout Texas landed Jon Gray via a four-year, $56 million deal to head the rotation. Pérez was added in the post-lockout frenzy in the belief that he still represented not only a potential improvement but also a possible mentor for a young staff. “We want a guy with some experience, that’s been through some ups and downs in the big leagues and does things the right way,” said manager Chris Woodward at the time. “That would be probably more beneficial than anything they’ll do on the field to be honest with you. But the next part of that would be the expectation to compete on the field. Obviously we want to bring in somebody that’s gonna be good and that’s gonna pitch quality innings for us.”

Pérez has more than lived up to expectations for the Rangers already, not only with his performance but also, as Newburg reported, with his mentoring of several minor league hurlers. The 6-foot, 200-pound southpaw has never been a pitcher who has missed a ton of bats, and he isn’t suddenly doing so now; though his 19.7% strikeout rate represents a career high, it’s still 1.7 points below the rate of the average starter this season. That said, he’s coupled a slight increase in strikeouts (from 19.1%) with a slight drop in walk rate (from 7.1% to 6.0%), and so his 13.8% strikeout-walk differential is not only a career high, but also nearly double his 7.0% mark from 2012 to ’21.

Pérez has accompanied that with his his highest groundball rate since 2016, his lowest home run rate since ’15, and a whole lot of soft contact:

Pérez isn’t quite the worm-killer that he was in his Texas heyday; from 2014 to ’16, he produced twice as many grounders as fly balls, a solid strategy for survival in Arlington. His home run rate, which is just over one-third of last year’s rate and one-half his career rate, ranks second in the AL. Meanwhile, his barrel rate, which places him in the 91st percentile, is his best since 2015, when he allowed 3.6% in 78.1 innings, and while his hard-hit rate is higher than it was a couple of years ago, more of those hard-hit balls are grounders that are doing less damage.

So how’s he doing it? Pérez has backed off the use of four-seamer in favor of his sinker, generally emphasized the pitches of his that generate more groundballs, and in particular produced much-improved results on both his changeup and cutter:

Location-wise, Pérez has done a better job of staying away from the middle of the plate and pitching more toward the corners. Via Statcast’s Attack Zones breakdown, he’s thrown just 19.5% of his pitches in the heart of the zone, down from 24.1% last year and 22.5% from 2017 to ’21. He’s dropped from +10 runs (allowing 10 runs more than average) to -2 runs in that area. Meanwhile, he has increased his percentage of pitches to the shadow zone, on the borderline; this year’s 50.6% rate there is up from last year’s 47% and his five-year average of 45.2%, and already he’s prevented a career-high — and major league-leading — 29 runs more than average there, up (or down, really) from last year’s 20.

Another way to illustrate how Pérez’s improved location has helped him reduce damage is by examining the results of his fly balls allowed. Note that Statcast classifies infield fly balls as popups, a separate category, and so the fly ball rates don’t match the Sports Info Solution figures incorporated into the aforementioned groundball/fly ball ratios:

The outfield fly balls Pérez is generating are leaving the bat with an exit velocity 4.2 mph slower than last year, cutting 30 feet off their average distance and reducing his wOBA allowed on such balls by more than half. Those fly balls are traveling 15 fewer feet than in any of his previous seasons, and while some of the reduction may owe to this year’s deadened baseball(s), a lot of it is just the reduced quality of contact.

Two months ago, The Athletic’s Levi Weaver reported that while Pérez’s pitch movement numbers were pretty consistent with last year’s, his improvement owed something to what pitching coach Brendan Sagara called “pitch maintenance,” acting on feedback via Rapsodo and Trackman devices in his bullpens as well as between-innings Statcast data:

“We also get data reports where — inning to inning — we can see it,” Sagara says. “We can pair it with video on an iPad and help him maintenance. Like, ‘You’re getting under this pitch here, your delivery is doing this, creating this shape instead of that shape.’”

…The benefit of the maintenance is that it helps to ensure that Pérez is throwing the best version of his pitches on a more consistent basis.

“Keeping the cutter with high vert(ical movement), keeping the sinker the sinker,” Sagara explains. “Because he has kind of a unique sinker and changeup where they’re not like, the more wind-aided types — it’s something that a little more deception to it … Just helping him shape his approach to his strengths. (Keeping the) sinker and changeup really strong, really good cutter command to both sides.”

All told, it’s an impressive set of improvements as well as a fine example of a player and coach using data and technology to unlock a new level of performance, and Pérez doesn’t seem inclined to tinker with that recipe. With the August 2 trade deadline approaching and the Rangers currently facing long odds of making the playoffs (they’re 41–45 with a 3.3% shot), the lefty has generated interest, but he told the Dallas News‘ Evan Grant last month that he wanted to stick around long-term:

“I want to be here and stay here, 100 percent… No, make it 300 percent. I’ve been in two other places and nowhere have I felt like as good as I feel here. Here, now, I feel like if I don’t do my job on the field one day, I can still do it in the clubhouse. I can help these guys. It’s not just about me and my career, but about this team.”

More recently, ESPN’s Buster Olney reported that the team will “probably only move him if they get something difference-making in return.” Thus it seems likely Pérez will continue to call Arlington home. In his second act, he’s finally the “homegrown” ace that the Rangers hoped he would become.