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There were 207 big leaguers who had at least 400 plate appearances last year. Peraza had the second worst OPS (.631) and, in the calculations of Baseball-Reference.com, had a -0.9 WAR, meaning that he cost the Reds nearly a win relative to a replacement-level player.
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It wasn’t that long ago that Peraza appeared to be a standout prospect. He was a consensus top-100 selection entering both 2015 (while in the Braves system before a mid-year trade to the Dodgers) and 2016 (after the Reds picked him up from L.A. in a three-way trade).
The Reds had him start 2016 in Triple A, but called him up in mid-May. While he struggled initially to find his big league footing, Peraza — after an August demotion to Triple A — had a dominant finish to the season, hitting .366/.387/.484 over the last six weeks of the season to close the year with a .324/.352/.411 line as a 22-year-old.
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Peraza performed poorly against that backdrop in 2017, hitting .259/.297/.324. He did steal 23 bases and showed some baseball skills that had become somewhat less relevant during the homer explosion of recent years.
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In 2018, however, Peraza seemed to blossom. At 24, he emerged as Cincinnati’s everyday shortstop and added power to his game, hitting .288/.326/.416 with 14 homers, 49 extra-base hits, and 23 steals in 29 attempts, an overall profile that made the comparisons to Phillips seem within reach.
But his 2019 struggles were magnified by some bad luck. According to Baseball Savant, his batted ball profile suggested an expected batting average of .269 and slugging mark of .361, but his actual marks were .239 and .345.
At a time when the Red Sox are reining in their spending, the team felt that Peraza’s 2018 season shouldn’t be overlooked, particularly given how he might be impacted by playing at Fenway Park and in the America League East parks. If his 2019 spray chart of fly balls was overlaid at Fenway Park, it appears that as many as 10 balls that resulted in doubles or outs would have been threats to leave the yard.
If Peraza can become slightly more selective in his age-26 season, then his ability to make contact — he swung and missed at just 7.9 percent of pitches last year, a whiff rate that placed him among the top 20 percent of hitters in the game – could yield an uptick in hard contact.
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At the least, the righthanded Peraza has shown sufficiently consistent production against lefties — a .297/.333/.406 line in his career, and a .287/.336/.407 line even in his 2019 down season
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