White Sox Acquire Junior Perez
The White Sox and Athletics have announced a trade, as outfielder Junior Perez is on his way to Chicago in exchange for minor league southpaw Jackson Nove. Perez was optioned to Triple-A Charlotte, and no further roster move was required since the Sox already had an open spot on their 40-man roster.
The A’s designated Perez for assignment on Thursday, ending a stint on the 40-man roster that began back in November when the Athletics added Perez in advance of the Rule 5 Draft. That placement came on the heels of the .298/.412/.642 slash line that Perez posted over 182 Triple-A plate appearances in 2025. Over the whole season at the Double-A and Triple-A levels, Perez hit .231/.348/.473 with 26 home runs, and 27 steals out of 33 attempts.
This seeming breakout got Perez ranked as the 20th-best prospect in the Athletics’ farm system by both Baseball America and MLB Pipeline, yet his numbers fell back to earth this year. He was hitting just .210/.273/.384 over 154 PA for Triple-A Las Vegas when the Athletics sent him to DFA limbo.
Perez has yet to make his big league debut, and he’ll now look for that opportunity in the Windy City. While his bat remains a work in progress, Perez is known as an excellent defender who can handle all three outfield positions, and he has a good throwing arm and plus speed. Perez has the tools to stick around as at least a bench option in the Show, but he’ll need to make some level of consistent and productive contact.
Nove is a University of Kentucky product who signed with the White Sox as a free agent after going undrafted in 2025. The 23-year-old has some eye-popping numbers in his first pro season, as Nove has a 1.96 ERA, 59.5% grounder rate, and a 42.3% strikeout rate over 23 innings with A-level Kannapolis.
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.
A’s Designate JJ Bleday For Assignment
The Athletics are designating outfielder JJ Bleday for assignment, reports Martín Gallegos of MLB.com. The A’s are adding prospects Braden Nett, Junior Perez and Chen Zhong-Ao Zhuang to their 40-man roster to keep them out of the Rule 5 draft.
The A’s are moving on from their Opening Day center fielder of the past two seasons. They acquired Bleday from the Marlins over the 2022-23 offseason in a one-for-one swap sending A.J. Puk to Miami. It was a change-of-scenery deal of former top 10 picks. Both players had brief amounts of success in their new home, but neither quite clicked in the way their acquiring club had hoped. Puk was beset by injuries, while Bleday struggled defensively and was up-and-down at the plate.
Bleday struggled in 2023, batting .195 with 10 home runs over 82 games. He followed up with the best season of his career, popping 20 longballs with a .243/.324/.437 slash while appearing in 159 games. It raised some hope of a late-career breakout, but Bleday’s bat regressed despite the move from Oakland to the much more hitter-friendly Sutter Health Park.
The Vanderbilt product batted .212/.294/.404 in 344 trips to the plate this year. He connected on 14 homers and still walked at a strong 10.5% clip, but his strikeout rate jumped by seven percentage points relative to the prior season. The A’s optioned him twice, but he spent the final two months of the season on the big league roster. He popped six homers and slugged .495 in that stretch, yet he also struck out in more than 30% of his trips to the dish.
Bleday’s overall production has been right around replacement level in two of the past three seasons. The A’s haven’t done him any favors in that regard by pressing him into center field — for which he’s clearly not equipped. He’s a fringe runner who has rated as arguably the game’s worst defensive center fielder over the past couple seasons. Bleday is serviceable but still subpar in the corners despite possessing above-average arm strength.
The 28-year-old surpassed three years of service this season. He’s eligible for arbitration for the first time and projected by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz for a $2.2MM salary. The A’s decided they’d rather move on, potentially turning center field to defensive stalwart Denzel Clarke. They have three days to see if they can drum up any trade interest to flip Bleday for a lottery ticket prospect. He’ll otherwise be non-tendered on Friday and become a free agent.
Nett is the highest profile of the three prospects. The 23-year-old righty came over from the Padres as part of the Mason Miller return. He spent the entire season at Double-A between the two affiliates. Nett started 24 games and combined for 105 2/3 innings of 3.75 ERA ball while striking out nearly a quarter of opponents. He walked 10.3% of batters faced and has struggled to throw strikes consistently throughout his career. Nett has a four-pitch mix that gives him a chance to start, though the command development will determine whether he sticks in the rotation or moves to relief down the line.
Perez, 24, also began his career in the San Diego system. He was traded to the A’s while he was in rookie ball for Jorge Mateo in 2020. A native of the Dominican Republic, he’s a right-handed hitting outfielder who connected on 26 homers between the top two minor league levels. There’s a lot of swing-and-miss to his game, but he has power and takes a lot of walks.
Zhuang is a 25-year-old righty from Taiwan. He signed with the A’s in 2021 and has worked as a minor league starter. He tossed 145 2/3 innings at Double-A Midland in 2025, pitching to a 4.08 ERA with solid underlying numbers. Zhuang fanned 24% of opponents while showing excellent control with a sub-6% walk percentage. Baseball America ranked him 25th in the A’s system coming into the year, crediting him with plus command and an above-average changeup but fringy breaking stuff.