The Rangers and left-hander Martin Perez have voiced hope of working out an extension since this summer, but with the team’s five-day exclusive negotiation window nearing its end, a multi-year deal isn’t close, Jon Morosi of MLB.com tweets. Texas is “likely” to make a qualifying offer to Perez if a multi-year deal can’t be agreed upon, Morosi adds.
A $19.65MM qualifying offer for Perez would’ve seemed unthinkable not long ago, but the 31-year-old lefty parlayed his one-year, $4MM Rangers reunion into a legitimate case for a multi-year deal in free agency (and, thus, for a possible QO). Perez ranked tenth among all big league pitchers with 196 1/3 innings pitched in 2022, and his career-best 2.89 ERA ranked 14th among qualified starting pitchers (and 23rd among the 140 pitchers with at least 100 innings pitched).
Perez’s breakout comes on the heels of a five-year stretch that saw him pitch to a 5.05 ERA in 611 2/3 big league innings for three different teams (Rangers, Twins, Red Sox). Despite persistently lackluster results, he continued to receive Major League deals in free agency, inking one-year pacts with the Twins, Red Sox and Rangers along the way. That, coupled with Perez’s longtime standing as one of the game’s premier pitching prospects (albeit more than a decade ago), suggested that teams see a bit more to him than his rudimentary numbers might otherwise indicate.
In 2022, Perez at last made good on those repeated shows of faith, but the reasons for his breakout are more subtle than other pitching breakouts we’ve seen in recent years. Perez didn’t add a lethal new breaking pitch, nor did he enjoy a pronounced spike in his velocity.
Rather, Perez made alterations to the same five-pitch mix on which he’s relied for some time now. This season’s 36.9% usage rate on his sinker was his highest since his last run with the Rangers in 2018. His 27.7% usage rate on his changeup was a career-high — but only by a matter of a couple percentage points over his 2020-21 levels. Perez has largely scrapped his four-seamer (6.5%) and curveball (3.5%), using them as show-me offerings that complement a heavier three-pitch reliance on his sinker, changeup and a cutter he implemented with the Twins in 2019. Neither the four-seamer nor the curveball, however, were prominently used pitches for Perez in recent seasons anyhow.
The biggest contributing factors to Perez’s success in 2022 might be ones that teams have a hard time buying into. His 0.50 HR/9 mark was miles better than his career 1.07 mark (and, particularly better than the 1.39 rate he’d yielded from 2018-21). Perez’s 77% strand rate is a hefty eight percentage points higher than his career norm. Add in the fact that he’ll turn 32 next year and again look to his modest track record prior to 2022, and there are enough red flags that Perez would seem likely to be ce capped at a three-year deal in free agency.
Granted, a three-year deal — even one at a lower rate than the qualifying offer — could still guarantee Perez quite a bit more than he’d earn by accepting a one-year commitment. That’ll be the question that he and his representatives at Octagon have to weigh; is it worth forgoing a guaranteed $19.65MM to lock that might be more in the $12-13MM range over a three-year term? Would a team even offer such a deal, knowing it’d also have to punt a draft pick (or multiple picks) in order to sign Perez?
Conversely, accepting the one-year term has its own risk-reward benefits. Repeating his 2022 excellence (or even approximating it) and returning to the market with a stellar two-year platform and without the burden of a qualifying offer — players can only receive one in their career — would set Perez up for a much larger deal than he could expect to command this winter. On the other hand, an injury or reversion to his 2018-21 form could potentially cost him $10-20MM over what he might get on a three-year deal.
Just where the two parties stand isn’t yet clear, but Perez has made no secret of his hope to remain in Texas long-term. “I want to be here and stay here, 100 percent,” the left-hander said back in July before adding: No — make it 300 percent.” Whether that exuberance manifests in a deal — and the extent to which the Rangers could be posturing in an effort to push Perez closer to a deal — will become clearer Thursday when qualifying offer decisions are formally due.
Locking in Perez, if he were to accept a qualifying offer, at $19.65MM would push the Rangers’ projected payroll to about $133MM, not including pre-arbitration players (hat tip to Roster Resource’s Jason Martinez). That would already be within $10MM of 2022’s Opening Day mark of $142MM, but the Rangers have taken payroll as high as $173MM in the past (2017) — and that was before they opened a new ballpark. General manager Chris Young has already plainly stated that the team’s payroll will increase in 2023, so there’s little reason to view a potential $19.65MM salary for Perez as any kind of burden that would hinder them from making further additions.
If he gets a QO, he should jump on it. Unlikely he beats that, certainly from an AAV perspective. And he’s still young enough that if he repeats his success, he can line himself up for a bigger payday next year.
Im not sure about that. He obviously wouldn’t get a AAV value the QO would give him, but a multi year contract like a 3 year $40-45 could be possible.
Ok, but if he has a similar year, he could get an AAV of closer to $25M than the $13-$15 you’re suggesting. If I ran a team, I wouldn’t sign him to more than two years, just because I’m not sure I buy the breakout, certainly not to that degree.
It would be an even tough sell on the agents part with the loss of a draft pick attached to him, so you’re probably right. He’ll most likely accept the QO.
thrower – You’re right, pretty much everyone wonders if this year was just a Brady Anderson type fluke.. Which is precisely why Perez should reject the QO and go for the 3yr/$45M contract instead.
You’re nuts, a lefty who pitches that well should be in line for 20M over four or five seasons.
@bwmiller I’d advise you to actually read the article so you understand why that’s not the case…..
I followed Martin Perez all season, he had a hell of a season, he keeps the ball down, doesn’t give up a lot of homers, has the makeup of a pitcher that can pitch well into his late thirties, the Ace of the Rangers staff, and probably one of the top 50 SP in MLB, and a nice lefty to roster, nothing like setting up a crafty lefty with a power pitching righty.
Maybe that’s the issue. You followed him only all season and not the rest of his career.
Credit due— he had a good year, but you’re the type of GM that would have overpayed for guys like Corbin, Ray or Stroman too.
You are probably right, be interesting to see where he signs, Perez was one of the pitchers I followed last season, really only followed a dozen or so closely, I get lost sometimes as a fan.
Lol I do too. Sorry if I came across harsh, wasn’t my intention.
“so there’s little reason to view a potential $19.65MM salary for Perez as any kind of burden that would hinder them from making further additions”………This is a ridiculous statement.. Sometimes I think the baseball writers here on “Trade Rumors” want teams to go bankrupt and cease to exist.. Paying 20 million dollars a year for #4/5 backend starters is a good way to go bankrupt. There’s “spending money” and then there’s “getting value” and hopefully the Texas Rangers understand the difference between the two.
They don’t want them to go bankrupt, but there does seem to be a general consensus among them that teams ought to always be going for it. I disagree. If you have no realistic shot, do a rebuild. I like rebuilds, provided there’s a plan to win eventually, not like how the Pirates have done it by and large for the last 3 decades.
As to the $20M, it’s a gamble, but it’s only one a one-year deal. It’s not going to break the bank and Texas has become extremely aggressive of late. I don’t think they’re as close as they seem to think they are, but it’s not my money they’re spending.
Can you tell me the last baseball organization that went bankrupt?
The 1970 Seattle Pilots….The 1993 Baltimore Orioles and the 2010 TEXAS RANGERS, under old owner Tom Hicks ALL went BANKRUPT, just to name the first few off the top of my head. Use Google to find the rest of the sports teams that OVEREXTENDED themselves..
The Pilots were an MLB team for ONE SEASON in a crappy minor-league stadium. Cheapskate co-owner Willam Daley refused to put more money into the team after their first-season struggles, and Bud Selig bought the franchise and moved it to Milwaukee, where the Pilots became the Brewers.
Comparing their finances to the finances of the current Texas Rangers is absurd.
They are all going bankrupt at these salaries but that’s the going rate.
The Rangers and Rockies are two teams that are perpetually in need of complete rebuilds yet don’t have the balls or skill to actually fully rebuild. A few losing seasons in and the Kris Bryants Cory Seagers and Marcus Semiens of the world are brought in with awful albatross contracts and management proclaims the rebuilds to be over. Then they win 65 games because management has put together clown parades for pitching staffs. At least the Rockies have a nice ballpark in a nice location that draws fans in. The Rangers play in a grungy armpit of a suburb in a ballpark that looks like and has the energy and enthusiasm of a Costco at 9:00 AM on a Tuesday morning.
Texas would be guaranteed to keep Martin Perez if they QO him. No GM is giving up a draft pick for a player who has lost his starting rotation spot in 3 of the last 4 years, because of crappy performance!
1+ years ago, any team could have had Perez for 3 years for about 8-10 million. Why massively overpay a backend guy like this who most likely regresses to career norms right after you sign him?
I looked over his numbers, he isn’t doing anything different.
sinker, cutter, change up,
but barrels are way down and launch angle on batted balls is way down, so he is pitching low in the zone with more control.
Looks like Perez got it together in a contract year, good for him, hope he gets paid, he is only 31, and probably has three or four good seasons in him. Honestly the kind of pitcher Perez he could pitch I to his late thirties if he wanted to, because he doesn’t rely on his velocity to get hitters out.
Let him walk.. last yr was a career yr he will not repeat
Take it and continue negotiations on a three-year deal. Worst that happens is he locks in one year at nearly $20M and then he’s an unrestricted free agent.
As a Ranger fan, I appreciate what Perez did for them, but I would not QO Perez for nearly 20 million. There will be several pitchers available with track records comparable to or better than Perez in his walk year that can be had for less than 20 million AAV..
“Thus” doesn’t need commas around it.
The commas are perfectly acceptable as used in the parenthetical statement.
They are unneeded, per the Chicago Manual of Style, and verified by Grammarly. If you don’t need to add commas, it’s advisable not to use them.
Leaving aside the appropriateness of pedantry in a baseball discussion thread, I’ll simply observe that I find no such prohibition in my copy of The Chicago Manual of Style, where the only specific reference to “thus” appears in entry 5.69 under the discussion of semicolon usage. If you can cite another reference in that book, please do so.
Meanwhile, this opinion from the site Grammarhow.com pertains to Steve’s use of commas:
‘You may also include vocative commas after “thus” when you want to encourage the reader to take a breath for emphasis:
‘I did not think about it and, thus, made the problem much worse.’
That’s precisely how Steve used the commas in his article above. It’s purely a question of style.
Again, I reiterate: they are unnecessary. So don’t clutter sentences with them.
I have to assume that you can’t cite a reference in The Chicago Manual of Style because when you claimed that publication as an authority, you were dissembling.
“Lo, thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee and for myself no quiet find.”
– From Sonnet 27 by William Shakespeare
“They might have been talking, thus, for a quarter of an hour or more . . .”
– From “Oliver Twist” by Charles Dickens
“Fenced in, thus, he felt himself hoisted to the top of a low flight of steps . . .”
– From “Barnaby Rudge – A Tale of the Riots of Eighty” by Charles Dickens
“He induced Mr. W. to empower him to draw out, thus, one particular sum of trust-money, amounting to twelve six fourteen, two and nine . . .”
– From “David Copperfield” by Charles Dickens
“There is a specifically matched enzyme for each substrate and, thus, for each chemical reaction; however, there is flexibility as well.”
– From “Biology” ©2017 Rice University.
Etc., etc.
All you need to do is search the manual for the term “thus.” You will note that it is never preceded by a comma when in the middle of a sentence. If the manual itself doesn’t treat the word with a comma before it, that’s all you need to know.
Shakespeare and Dickens use outdated language. We don’t use “thou” to address people in writing of any level, so despite these writers’ stature, it is foolish to evaluate modern writing based on their practices completely.
I’m sure that biology text doesn’t use Chicago/Turabian since it’s STEM.
6.16 “Effective use of the comma involves good judgment, with the goal being ease of reading.”
Your citation of entry 6:16 (not from The Chicago Manual of Style, unless you have a different edition than mine) is, in fact, apposite.
Writing is the symbolic representation of human thought and human speech.
A comma is:
“the symbol used in writing to separate parts of a sentence showing a slight pause, or to separate the single things in a list” – Cambridge Dictionary
“PAUSE, INTERVAL” – definition #2 of “comma,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Note: “showing a slight pause” and “PAUSE”
Now, once again, from Grammarhow.com:
‘You may also include vocative commas after “thus” when you want to encourage the reader to take a breath for emphasis:
‘I did not think about it and, thus, made the problem much worse.’
And since those previously cited hacks, Shakespeare and Dickens, don’t pass muster with you, here’s a modern example of using commas to represent a pause in speech. It’s taken from a transcription of an interview published in The Guardian in 2011:
“The main problem, and rather a crucial one when you’re asking people to invest interest in a whole series, was that it was well-nigh impossible to tell who everyone was. And, thus, to care.”
Capisce? Once more: ‘You may also include vocative commas after “thus” when you want to encourage the reader to take a breath for emphasis.’
Acknowledging your difficulty in grasping this nuance of comma usage and/or your unwillingness to admit that you’re wrong, I won’t waste any more time on this. The poor horse is dead.
There’s no moral failing, nor should there be shame, in making an honest mistake. We’re all fallible. It’s our nature.
I wish you a pleasant evening. Honestly.
Apparently, you didn’t read what I said.
“All you need to do is search the manual for the term “thus.” You will note that it is never preceded by a comma when in the middle of a sentence. If the manual itself doesn’t treat the word with a comma before it, that’s all you need to know.”
Case closed. But if you want to make more backhanded slights at my intelligence, feel free. I never once said this was a matter of “right” vs. “wrong. The entire time I said that the commas were not NEEDED. That is what you are not grasping. They are unnecessary. Capisce?
You act like you’re the smartest person in the room sometimes. I agree with all your long-winded but correct political takes, but here you are looking strictly in black and white, then also being self-righteous, followed by dissing my brains by saying I’m failing to grasp something that only you think is right or wrong, when I am not even arguing that binary.
“Writing is the symbolic representation of human thought and human speech.”
Ever transcribed an interview? People talk in run-on sentences all the time. You can’t treat them so closely.
Your Guardian transcription is not a good example of what I’m talking about. When transcribing, we write with [sic], ellipses, and all manner of other punctuation to make a run-on, unrehearsed segment of speech more legible. We can divide sentences where we want. You are seeing one transcriber’s interpretation of this. Produce the audio, and you’ll find different interpretations. I would have used em dashes for that aside about investment regardless, for example. You could do that for thus, or you could just not put commas around it. Are you going to tell me that’s wrong too? When transcribing, there are no imperatives. You need to realize that you’re talking to someone who does this stuff for a living, and my opinion is just as valid as yours.
At the risk of identifying with the biblical dog returning to his own vomit, I’ll respond, primarily because I hurt your feelings.
First, I had no intention of casting aspersions on your intelligence, which, quite obviously, is comparatively high. Your erudition is evident. So, if I gave you that false impression, I do apologize.
Full disclosure: when I said, “Acknowledging your difficulty in grasping this nuance of comma usage and/or your unwillingness to admit that you’re wrong, I won’t waste any more time on this,” I was being ironic. I took for granted that you could grasp the point but were refusing to acknowledge it. But perhaps I was wrong.
It’s a well-attested feature of human psychology that we often take the greatest offense at people who manifest our own foibles. I think this might be case when you say, “You act like you’re the smartest person in the room sometimes.”
Remember, my only purpose in replying to your comment to Mr. Stevens was to defend him, not me. It was his writing that I defended, not mine.
I could have, and perhaps should have, ignored your comment, but (1) it was wrong, and (2) it was unnecessary. This website provides a contact form through which one can address the writers by email. It seemed to me that, rather than risk embarrassing one of these hardworking writers by calling him out in the public message thread, you might have availed yourself of that more-private option. I think these guys get too muck flak from readers who access their work for free.
And here’s why your attempted correction was, in itself, wrong: not because one normally doesn’t enclose “thus” in commas in the middle of a sentence, but because there are exceptions. You were incorrect in demanding that all uses of the word “thus” conform to your single rule. The point is that Mr. Stevens was correct in his use of commas to designate a parenthetical pause for emphasis, notwithstanding your insistence on wielding a single rule as a sort of grammatical nuclear option.
You were not wrong in noting the usual practice. You were wrong in denying the validity of exceptions.
As the linguist John McWhorter observed: “Prescriptive grammar has spread linguistic insecurity like a plague among English speakers for centuries, numbs us to the aesthetic richness of non-standard speech, and distracts us from attending to genuine issues of linguistic style in writing.”
Henry David Thoreau said: “When I read some of the rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly, I think any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it.”
If you do this stuff for a living in the context of teaching schoolchildren, I beg you to be less stringent in acquainting them with our marvelously fluid and frequently irrational language.
“Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all.” – Walt Whitman
Sometimes the freedom, as in Whitman’s case, is essential to the beauty.
The fact that you felt the need to defend this writer, whose name is Steve Adams, not “Mr. Stevens” is strange, especially because I did not cast aspersions on his skill or his character, by merely stating that his commas were unnecessary. And I don’t see how that makes you think I’m pretending to be the smartest person in the room. I’m making one small point about punctuation, not going at every single point in his argument.
“(1) it was wrong, and (2) it was unnecessary” It was not wrong, and I argued my point as such. Again, this isn’t about wrong or right, but it’s not wrong to offer constructive criticism to any writer. Sure, it wasn’t necessary, but neither are the commas, so… also, they don’t respond to emails about their writing style. Believe me, I’ve tried. I’m sure Adams can deal with any small amount of embarrassment that comes from a small grammatical error and doesn’t need your defense.
You can quote whatever flowery writer you like, I think using the commas around “thus” is being cute for cute’s sake and takes away from the substance of any written argument. I will continue to mark that in papers I grade, because I’ve been doing it for a long time, and I know what good writing looks like. Good writers do things like add too many commas (I do it too) but good writers also can take their ego out of the equation and listen to others’ points, as I’ve listened to yours.
The exception you keep harping on—a grammatical pause—can be done any number of ways. See? I literally just did it. A single word is hardly a pause even in parlance, since that’s how you prefer to view the written word, as a manifestation of spoken word. “However” is surrounded by commas in written language, as is “though,” but in parlance those words don’t always have emphases via pause or stress, particularly “though.”
NO
Perez had a great first half and tailed off the second half. His last few starts we’re not particularly impressive. I would be cautious with a $20M price tag. He’s worth half that knowing he had a careeer year.
What’s the length of time he’s got to accept or decline the QO?
My guess is they’ll work towards a 2-3 year deal at more actual dollars than the QO offers up.
It sounds like he wants to be there, and at worst he’s probably a back end of the rotation guy. Which at 10-15 million is probably where that’s at anyway.
Of course, if their farm system could produce more pitching prospects, this would be a different take. But they’re not great at that.
I’d like to keep Perez around, but not at that price. I’d rather use that money to up the ante on one of the available aces.
If Texas offers Perez the QO, he’d better take it. Nobody is approaching that AAV and giving up a draft pick. He’ll be sitting until after the draft and then need to prove himself again through 2023 while probably having only been offered 8-10mil for remainder of ’23.