For a long time, there has been a narrative around Hernán Pérez. It’s possible the narrative is starting to reflect reality.
A waiver claim in 2015, Pérez has played nearly 500 games for the Milwaukee Brewers across nearly every defensive position (and he’s campaigned to no avail to be allowed to catch, also). In fact, he’s been listed in the lineup nine different ways in 2018 alone, including eight defensive positions and an appearance as the designated hitter.
Pérez’s defensive abilities have never been in question. He has the rare ability to make positive contributions defensively in almost any spot, as he demonstrated on Sunday when he started a sparkling double play from deep in the hole at shortstop a day after playing second base and three days after starting in right field. Pérez’s versatility is such an asset because, as the Brewers and their broadcasters have routinely stated over the years, “his bat is too good to keep out of the lineup.”
That’s where the narrative around Pérez, at least for a time, took a detour away from reality. While Pérez’s offensive game has shown flashes of potential over the years, his results did not suggest that the Brewers needed his offensive presence. Pérez entered the season with 1,239 career plate appearances and a .283 on-base percentage. Despite playing in a hitter-friendly park, Pérez’s on-base plus slugging was more than 40 points below league average in 2017. He’s only the third Brewer ever to make more than 1,400 plate appearances with an OBP under .300 and the first one to do so in 27 years.
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A Featured Player
But the Brewers haven’t just played Pérez a lot; they’ve featured him. He’s started 158 games as a Brewer in the second, third, fourth or fifth spot in the lineup. FanGraphs estimates that Pérez has been worth -45 offensive runs across his seven MLB seasons, but Craig Counsell has managed to get him into 468 of his first 604 managerial games. Even with Counsell’s current glut of options following the front office’s decisions to add Mike Moustakas, Jonathan Schoop and Curtis Granderson to an already crowded position player unit, Pérez has appeared in 30 of the Brewers’ 34 games since Wednesday, Aug. 1, and started 13 of them.
The interesting thing is, that decision to keep penciling Pérez into the lineup has paid off. Even with an 0-for-3 performance on Sunday, Pérez is batting .287 with a .341 on-base percentage and .467 slugging in his last 51 appearances, dating back to Thursday, July 5. It’s a relatively small sample size (132 plate appearances), and he’s benefitting from an abnormally high .341 batting average on balls in play (his career mark is .302), but it’s still an encouraging development as the Brewers work to chase a postseason spot.
One of the challenges in Pérez’s offensive game has been a tendency to be overaggressive. Entering the season, he had walked just 46 times in 1,239 plate appearances—about 3.7% of the time. Following Sunday’s game, Pérez had walked 16 times in 311 trips to the plate in 2018 (5.1%), including 10 times in 132 plate appearances since July 5 (7.6%).
It’s worth noting that, while 2018 is Pérez’s seventh MLB season, he was called up for the first time as a 21-year-old and is still only 27. It’s possible he’s still maturing as a hitter, in which case his recent success would be a good sign for his future. He’s still under team control through the 2020 season, so the Brewers could have some time to reap the benefits of his improved approach if he’s able to keep this up.
Hernan Pérez’s offensive game hasn’t always lived up to the hype the Brewers have attached to it over the years, but he’s rewarded their patience over the last couple of months, and there are reasons to hope he’ll continue to do so.
