A’s Acquire José Suarez, Designate Junior Perez For Assignment

The Athletics acquired left-hander José Suarez from the Mariners in exchange for cash, the teams announced Thursday. Seattle designated Suarez for assignment earlier in the week. In a corresponding move, the A’s designated outfielder Junior Perez for assignment. Since Suarez is out of minor league options, he’ll jump right onto the Athletics’ big league roster.

Suarez opened the season with Atlanta but was designated for assignment earlier in the month. The Mariners scooped him up but gave him only one appearance (two innings, one run allowed) before jettisoning him from their own 40-man roster. Overall, the 28-year-old has a grisly 6.38 ERA in 18 1/3 frames this season.

Suarez has missed bats at a far loftier level than usual but has also displayed the worst command of his career this season. His 26.7% strikeout rate and 13% swinging-strike rate are both well north of his respective career marks of 20.9% and 11.7%. However, Suarez has walked 15.6% of his opponents — six percentage points higher than his career 9.6% mark. He’s also hit a batter and tossed a pair of wild pitches.

Back in 2021-22, Suarez looked to be emerging as a quality fourth starter in Anaheim. He gave the Halos 207 1/3 innings with a 3.86 ERA with a slightly below-average strikeout rate but a walk rate that was a bit better than average. The wheels came off in 2023, due in no small part to a shoulder strain that sent him to the injured list for several months. He posted an 8.29 ERA in 33 2/3 innings that season and was only marginally better in 52 1/3 frames the following season (6.02 ERA). He had decent results in a small sample with the Braves last season but generally has not gotten back to that 2022-23 form — or come particularly close — over any meaningful period of time.

Suarez is making $900K this season. That’s only $120K north of league minimum, but the A’s are now on the hook for the remainder of that sum. He’s worked as both a starter and reliever in the past but seems ticketed for manager Mark Kotsay’s bullpen — at least for now. The A’s presently have Luis Severino, Jeffrey Springs, Aaron Civale, Jacob Lopez and J.T. Ginn in the rotation, although Lopez (today’s starter versus the Cardinals) has been hit extremely hard in 2026.

As for Perez, he was only selected to the 40-man roster back in November. A mid-May DFA would have seemed far-fetched at the time. The A’s were understandably unwilling to risk letting Perez go unprotected ahead of the Rule 5 Draft after he’d slashed .231/.348/.478 with 26 homers, 27 steals and a 14.8% walk rate between Double-A and Triple-A in 2025.

Impressive as that ’25 showing was, Perez’s age-24 season has gotten out to a miserable start. He’s tallied 154 plate appearances in Triple-A and turned in a gruesome .210/.273/.384 batting line with a diminished 8.4% walk rate against a concerning 33.1% strikeout rate. He’s made contact on only 68.9% of his swings against Triple-A pitching — nowhere close to the major league average of 76.8%. The gap between his 79% in-zone contact rate and the major league average 86.3% is about the same size.

Perez is a right-handed hitter with plus speed and above-average power. He’s capable of playing all three outfield spots and has spent the bulk of his minor league tenure in center field, where scouting reports peg him as serviceable. There are clear hit tool concerns with him — he also fanned at a 28% clip in 2025 — but the power/speed/defense combination and a full slate of minor league options feels like it should be enough to garner interest from another team. That, plus the fact that the A’s are extremely deep in outfielders, perhaps contributed to him being bumped from the 40-man roster. It’s feasible that another club with far less outfield depth could offer up a low-level prospect to take a chance on the toolsy Perez, this year’s struggles notwithstanding.