In 2022, Martín Pérez was absolutely on fire. He put up a sterling four-win season, made the American League All-Star team, and established a new career-high strikeout rate. The Rangers gave him a qualifying offer to keep him in the fold, and he accepted it. All the while, I steadfastly refused to write about him, because c’mon, really, could this be real? Surely the other shoe was going to drop, right?
It largely did. Last season saw Pérez banished to the bullpen and then used sparingly as a lefty specialist in the playoffs, where he struck out two, walked three, and gave up five runs in three outings. He signed with the Pirates after the year, and his role seemed clear: soak up innings until their exciting young pitchers were ready, and potentially continue to work with those guys in a six-man rotation thereafter. The Pirates needed bulk pitching at a reasonable rate, and he gave it to them, delivering 16 starts, 83 innings, and 0.3 wins above replacement.
Now it’s time to write about Pérez, though. Why? The Pirates didn’t have a ton of space for him given the excellence they’re getting from the rest of their rotation, so they put him on the trade block, and the most natural thing in baseball happened: AJ Preller came calling. That’s right, the Pirates traded Pérez to San Diego in exchange for Ronaldys Jimenez. The Pirates are also covering some of his salary – a sentence I’ve never actually typed before, so they’ve got that going for them.
Despite all their offseason acquisitions, the Padres don’t have enough pitching. Joe Musgrove has been out since May, though he’s scheduled to begin a rehab assignment soon. Yu Darvish has also been out since May and is now on the restricted list for a personal matter, with no timetable to return. The Padres have somehow only used seven starters this year, and their farm system doesn’t have a lot of depth at the top to ease the burden if they need more. As astute mathematicians will tell you, seven minus two (Musgrove and Darvish) is five. Five minus one (Adam Mazur, who made eight rough starts before getting traded to the Marlins in the Tanner Scott deal) is four. That means the Padres didn’t have a complete rotation, plain and simple.
If your alternative is not having a rotation, Pérez is a great option. He’s certainly not an ace, but he’s definitely someone you can hand the ball to every five days. There’s no chance that he’ll go full Mazur and walk 13% of opposing batters. The other team will surely get theirs when facing Pérez – he’s given up 13 homers in 16 starts this year, and I won’t sugarcoat it, the peripheral numbers are ugly – but he’ll make them work for it. When you put Pérez in your rotation, you basically know what you’re getting: replacement level performance from a dependable veteran.
The Padres needed that. They weren’t getting that from the fifth slot in their rotation. Honestly, they’ve barely been getting it from the fourth slot in their rotation, so even after Musgrove returns, they might have a use for Pérez. They’re clinging to the last Wild Card spot with three teams breathing down their necks. They’d be a dangerous postseason team if they qualified. It’s all about getting there, and with most of their prospect capital used on improving their bullpen, something had to be done at the back of the rotation.
That suited the Pirates well enough, so they sent Pérez on his way and even paid down a bit of his salary to get something in return. That something is Jimenez, an 18-year-old who signed with the Padres last year. He’s pretty much a mystery box. He has all of six competitive professional innings to his name, and he wasn’t heavily scouted before then. Per our prospect team, he has an interesting fastball that sits around 90-94 with good movement, plus a low-80s slider and a changeup he’s still working on. There’s some projection left there, too; he’s on the smaller side but he’s quite athletic. He’s tracking to be an honorable mention on Pittsburgh’s list of prospects while we wait to see further results.
Honestly, that seems pretty good to me. Pérez just wasn’t doing anything for them, and even if they assume some of his contract, there are still some cost savings in sending him away. Jimenez is a long shot, but the thing about long shots is that they hit sometimes.
For the Padres, it’s like this: If you need to put Martín Pérez in your rotation to improve it, well, that means that you needed to put Martín Pérez in your rotation to improve it. That’s not a great sign for a playoff contender, but it would be even worse to not have him. Such is life when you ride the Preller express. There are phenomenal sugar-rush highs like watching Fernando Tatis Jr. hit, and intermittent what-is-going-on lows like trading for a 33-year-old with a 5.70 xERA and plugging them right into your rotation.
