Major League Baseball

Everything about Eury Pérez seems impossible — including hitting against the Marlins' rookie ace

Published Jun. 27, 2023 6:01 p.m. ET

Marlins rookie pitcher Eury Pérez is a freak of baseball nature.

He is a unicorn, a shooting star, a lottery ticket, a ballet dancer in cleats, a tree-shaped wunderkind, a must-see attraction, a once-in-a-generation athlete who happens to play baseball. If he was from Houston, or Paris, or Yaoundé, the 6-foot-8 Pérez probably ends up playing college basketball as an athletic wing player whose reach makes him a defensive nightmare. Thankfully, Pérez was born and raised in Santiago, the Dominican Republic’s second-largest city, a place where baseball dominates life and beyond.

And so, just two months removed from his 20th birthday, Pérez climbs an MLB mound every five nights, twisting hitters a decade older than him into pretzels. Despite having zero career Triple-A starts under his belt, the lanky righty has flummoxed his big league elders, sending them back to the dugout wondering what just happened, wondering how someone that young and that tall can pitch that beautifully.

Six-foot-eight pitchers are not supposed to move like this. Neither are 20-year-olds. So, a starting pitcher with that profile exhibiting such advanced body control and athleticism on the sport’s biggest stage against the best in the world is downright mindblowing.

But Pérez is more than an eye test. Check the numbers.

Since debuting May 12th, Pérez has struck out 54 batters, walked 17 and posted a 1.34 ERA. It's the lowest mark through 47 innings since 1973, highlighting one of the best starts to a pitching career in MLB history. His frame makes all of this even more fanciful.

In baseball, it’s typically a good thing to be tall, but not too tall.

Being vertically endowed means greater variance for all the moving parts. The longer the limbs, the further they need to travel through space before the baseball is actually thrown. As such, it tends to be exceedingly difficult for taller pitchers to repeat their deliveries, which often leads to control issues or recurring injuries. Not to mention things like fastball shape and vertical approach angle, which tend to favor shorter pitchers who throw four-seam fastballs like the one Pérez has.

But Eury’s elite athleticism and maturity have helped him beat the odds.

"The one thing that shocked me was the way he controlled his body, for how big he is," said Marlins catching prospect Paul McIntosh, who caught Pérez multiple times during the pitcher’s swift journey up the minor-league ladder "Everyone knows he has elite stuff, but the body awareness to move the way he does with that frame is what surprised me the most."

Pérez is one of just four current MLB pitchers listed at 6-8 or above (Tyler Wells, Tyler Glasnow and Bailey Ober). Only four starting pitchers that tall — Randy Johnson, Chris Young, J.R. Richard and Gene Conley — have ever been selected to an All-Star Game. Pérez, despite his small body of work, could soon be the fifth.

A number of big-league hitters unlucky enough to face Pérez this season all had the same general observation: The big man knows how to pitch. Sure, the skyscraping rookie has GIF-able raw stuff — an upper-90s heater with superb spin rates, a ripcurl slider with sharp break, a tight low-80s curveball he’ll show to lefties and a now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t changeup that many scouts consider his best pitch — but it’s the command, sequencing and poise that have really turned heads.

Watch his most recent outing against Pittsburgh and you’ll see what these pros are talking about. Pérez has a masterful ability to dot the glove-side edge of the strike zone with his slider whenever he wants. If he finds himself ahead in the count and needs to elicit a chase, he can effortlessly locate that breaker off the plate for a swinging strike.

Young pitchers are famously fickle. An injury can sidetrack a promising career for years or doom it entirely. The history of the sport is dotted with hotshot hurlers who carved up a storm as youngsters, only to drop off precipitously before turning 28. For every Clayton Kershaw who wowed and maintained, there are handfuls of Matt Harveys, Jeremy Hellicksons and Neftali Félizes whose stars flashed bright, but brief.

Because of his size, there will always be an injury cloud floating above Pérez’s head. Tall pitchers are bigger machines with bigger parts more likely to have something go wrong. But the fluidity, grace and consistency of Pérez’s motion lends more confidence than the typical young-pitching lamppost. And while his elite raw stuff has contributed to his meteoric rise, the newcomer's ability to sequence, locate, repeat and read swings portends extremely well for the future.

But let’s not worry about the years to come. Appreciate the present, my friends. Eury Pérez is appointment viewing right now. Stay tuned.

Jake Mintz, the louder half of @CespedesBBQ is a baseball writer for FOX Sports. He played college baseball, poorly at first, then very well, very briefly. Jake lives in New York City where he coaches Little League and rides his bike, sometimes at the same time. Follow him on Twitter at @Jake_Mintz.