Baseball buzzing about Perez
While doing so recently, I stumbled across a Tampa Bay Devil Rays fan message board, where a member wrote that I had called Rays center field prospect Fernando Perez "the best prospect in the Minors" on a preseason radio show.
I was actually misquoted (I know, I know, everyone wants to hear the reporter complain about being misquoted). What I said was that I thought Fernando Perez was the most exciting prospect in the Minors.
I tried to explain all the reasons, tangible and intangible, why Perez may be the single most intriguing player in the Minors right now. I probably failed miserably in the attempt, but fortunately Perez himself has helped my cause tremendously.
Perez, a member of the Double-A Montgomery Biscuits, has managed to create no small amount of buzz thanks to the bi-weekly journal he's been writing for us here at MiLB.com.
Of course, it comes as no surprise to me that Perez's journal entries have been insightful, incisive, witty and poignant. After all, the guy majored in Creative Writing at Columbia University.
In fact, his brilliance with the pen (or, I guess, the computer keyboard) puts me in the slightly weird position of writing a column about someone who is frankly a much better writer than I am.
I first got to see him play this past October, when I spent time covering the Arizona Fall League, where he was playing for the eventual league champion Phoenix Desert Dogs.
By the time I got there, just a few days into the season, the press box contingent had already dubbed Perez "Mr. Excitement." And although we press-box denizens have the reputation for being a little snarky sometimes, there was nothing sarcastic about this moniker.
Just a few days' worth of watching Perez patrol center field with dazzling defense, and seeing the havoc he created on the bases with his tremendous speed, caught people's notice.
And by the time the playoffs ended, fittingly on a highlight-reel, game-saving, over-the-shoulder running catch in center field (I don't have to tell you who made it), it wasn't just the press box that was buzzing about Perez.
"He was probably the most exciting player in the league," said Phoenix manager Tony DeFrancesco, the current skipper of the Oakland Athletics' Triple-A club at Sacramento. "He will be a Major League player down the road."
And when he reaches that intersection, he will join an elite group of Ivy Leaguers who have made the Majors. His own alma mater can boast three Hall of Famers (Lou Gehrig, Eddie Collins and John Montgomery Ward) and 21 alumni who have made it to the bigs, the most recent being pitcher Frank Seminara, who last pitched for the New York Mets in 1994.
Ironically, Perez himself grew up in the shadow of another Ivy League university, in Princeton, N.J., though he was born in Brooklyn (not in Elizabeth, N.J., as much of his bio material inexplicably states).
"My family is Cuban, and they came over when you could, when Castro was basically saying 'get out if you want to go,'" Perez explained. "Luckily they went because I think about a year later he changed his mind to 'if you want to go, you're going to prison.' My grandfather got tons of our family out of there, and they all came to New York first."
Growing up in New Jersey, Perez was your basic "can do it all" kid, a multi-sport athlete who may have been even better at soccer than he was at baseball, while also an across-the-board scholar.
When it came time to choose a college, he had burned out on soccer and chosen to focus on only baseball, but not to the point where he was looking for the most exposure he could get on a playing field.
"I was recruited by a lot of baseball schools, and I really didn't consider them because I wanted to go to school for school," he explained, adding that he didn't really think about playing professional baseball until after his freshman year at Columbia. "I was just looking for the best possible school and hoping it had a baseball team. Columbia was perfect. I really wanted to go to New York, it was a great school, they had Division I baseball."
Perez will be the first one to admit to, and warn others about, the difficulty of trying to juggle Division I athletics, Ivy League academics and New York City cultural life.
"It's impossible," he said. "At times my pecking order, well, I probably shouldn't even admit it out loud. But I would definitely say that academics took a back seat to baseball."
Of course, by that point he had pretty much decided to pursue a pro baseball career so priorities had shifted.
"That was surprising to my friends and teachers that maybe didn't see it as 'me' and weren't really expecting it," he admits. "To them it was kind of like joining the army."
But Perez didn't completely abandon his studies. In fact, after being drafted in the seventh round of 2004, the highest draft slot ever for a Columbia player, he returned to school during the next two offseasons and graduated with an American Studies/Creative Writing degree last year.
And no, he has no regrets about choosing academics over a more visible baseball program at the outset.
"If I had gone to one of those schools, maybe I would have been a higher-round pick, maybe I'd have a nicer car or something relatively unimportant," he said. "But I don't regret it."
When Perez worked out for the Devil Rays prior to the draft, they knew he would be a work in progress, due to the sheer lack of playing time he'd gotten due to the school's Northeast schedule and a hamstring injury that had sidelined him for part of his junior year. They knew it would take some patience as he got the reps he needed over his first few years.
"We knew right away he was a good athlete, but athleticism and performance are two different things," said Mitch Lukevics, Tampa Bay's director of Minor League operations. "But his athletic ability plays on both halves of the inning." Perez made his pro debut in 2004 at short-season Hudson Valley in the New York-Penn League, hitting .232 in 69 games and finishing fifth in the league with 24 steals. The next summer, his first full season, he moved up to Class A Southwest Michigan and hit .289 with a league-high 57 steals, the third-most ever in a single season for a Tampa Bay Minor Leaguer. He also ranked in the Midwest League's top five in triples, runs and hits and was voted "Fan Favorite" by the Southwest Michigan fans as well as team MVP.
The biggest transition that Perez has had to make in his pro career thus far has been adding some left-handed hitting to his game. And while he did not officially add "switch-hitter" to his resume until the 2006 season, it was something that started brewing even before the 2004 draft.
"I came out for my workout with the Devil Rays and someone asked me if I had ever hit left-handed before, and I said no," he recalled. "So they suggested I try it, and I said, 'You can't be serious! This is a workout, I'm trying to look good and run fast and be impressive.'"
Still, the idea stuck with him and as soon as he signed he began the process on his own, doing drills that would get his arms and body used to the muscle memory. Although he didn't hit left-handed at all at Southwest Michigan, when he went home during that offseason, he practiced exclusively as a left-handed hitter.
When he headed west to Advanced A Visalia, he did so officially as a switch-hitter.
"I think the key is that I went at it in the offseason as if I needed to do it to survive," Perez said. "I had a good year hitting right-handed my first full season, but felt if I could do this, it would be doubly impressive and more of a weapon."
The transition was remarkable. In his switch-hitting debut in the California League, Perez not only hit a career-best .307 in 133 games but led the Minors in runs scored with 123 and was fifth in the Minors with 168 hits. The 123 runs shattered the Devil Rays' Minor League record of 107.
Perez's teammate at Visalia, shortstop prospect Reid Brignac was named California League MVP, while Perez was voted the team's Player of the Year.
"Fernando Perez is as conscientious a worker as anyone, and, coupled with his aptitude, you can see how quickly he's taken to switch-hitting," Lukevics said. "To lead all of baseball in runs and be that high up there in hits in his first season switch-hitting is amazing."
Perez, a notoriously slow starter, had been heating up at Montgomery, as well, before a knee injury suffered on an awkward slide into second landed him on the disabled list (he is expected to return to action any day). He was hitting .272 with 10 steals at the time of his April 29 injury, tops in the Southern League in stolen bases, and had a four-steal game and a three-steal game in his last nine games, a span during which he'd been hitting .367.
Perez may be the best defensive center fielder and the most dangerous speed threat in a system that is deep in outfield prospects, but perhaps his best asset is the intangible one of makeup.
He answers the question about what he considered to be his greatest strength with insight and wit that is his hallmark: "I think, I hope, it's some intangibles about making adjustments in time to make sure that I'm always helping the team, to make sure I'm always more of an asset to them than I am taking away. I'd like to imagine that it's that sort of commitment to performing well. I would like to say that would be it," he mused. "But a simpler and less long-winded answer would be my speed."
And certainly his intelligence has helped him hasten the adjustment process as well.
"I don't know if it's necessarily the specifics of being a good student, but I think good students have the qualities of being mindful of what they're doing, having a certain degree of thoughtfulness," he said. "This game is about experience. That's why we don't have guys who just step in and start playing in the Major Leagues, and that's something I didn't understand until I got some, and realized I needed even more."
This attitude, this constant drive to improve, to get better, to do what it takes to help his team has earned him a lot of respect and admiration from folks in the system.
"He's a very driven young man," Lukevics said. "It's not acceptable for him to be just okay. I really think makeup is everything, it separates good from great, that's one of Fernando's strongest attributes."
With an organization that is counting on its up-and-coming prospects, as well as the handful of talented young players already in Tampa, to form the nucleus of a future contender in the always-tough American League East, the Devil Rays would love to see Perez continue to improve at the rate he has done so far and make it to the big leagues before long.
The fact is, this is a guy who is not only an exciting player on the field, but he's exactly what Tampa Bay, what baseball, needs: a player with intelligence, passion for the game and charisma that is off the charts.
In fact, baseball probably needs Fernando Perez a lot more than Fernando Perez needs baseball.
Luckily for baseball, Fernando Perez loves the game and he's not planning on leaving it anytime soon.
Lisa Winston is a reporter for MLB.com.