Eury Pérez’s midsummer surge has hit a rough patch at the worst possible time for Miami.
After a 13-start run from May 22-Aug. 22 in which he put up a 1.67 ERA - second best in the Majors - and 2.5 fWAR, seventh in the National League, the right-hander has looked out of sync in each of his last three outings. That slide continued Monday afternoon, when Pérez was tagged for a career-high 10 hits and a career-high-tying seven runs, five earned, over just four innings in the Marlins’ 9-4 loss to the Mets at loanDepot park.
The defeat pushed Miami to 72-73 and left it five games back of Arizona, which sits at 77-68, for the third and final National League Wild Card spot with 17 games to play.
“To be honest, I don’t know exactly what to say specifically what’s going on,” Pérez said via interpreter Luis Dorante. “I think going out there, things are not going well.
I go out there and try to make adjustments every time, every inning. They’re attacking every time I’m throwing in the zone.
They’re making good contact, good swings.”
The recent numbers tell the same story. Over his last 11 2/3 innings, Pérez has allowed 18 runs, 16 earned, on 21 hits. He has also walked at least three batters in five straight starts.
So what’s different?
Clayton McCullough pointed first to Pérez’s inability to get into favorable counts as often as he was during that dominant stretch. In the previous 13-start run, only 26.7% of his pitches came from behind in the count. In the two starts leading into Monday, that number climbed to 34.7%.
“It's more he's just not able to access the zone with as many offerings,” Marlins manager Clayton McCullough said. “He's just been in worse counts here over those last few starts than he was before, and you get boxed in some.
And the big leagues is a good league. It's tough, and guys are good, and so [when] you're not able to gain count leverage, and you can't threaten with other pitches at various points within an at-bat and within counts, you make it tough.”
The fastball has remained loud on the radar gun. Pérez averaged 98.1 mph on his four-seamer, a figure that sits in the 98th percentile.
But the pitch has not played the same way lately. Over his last two starts before Monday, hitters hit .400 against it with a 1.100 slugging percentage.
Including Monday, eight of the 15 batted balls against the pitch have been classified as hard hit, meaning 95-plus mph exit velocity.
That’s a sharp contrast from the earlier 13-start stretch, when opponents batted .140 with a .209 slugging percentage against the four-seamer, along with a 40.7% hard-hit rate.
Pérez said the issue may start before the fastball even leaves his hand.
“I’ve been missing with some of those secondary pitches,” Pérez said. “That could be one of the factors that’s affecting the fastball.
It’s something that we’re working on. … I would say a bit of mechanics.
It’s just a matter of making the same movement when I do the fastball [as] with the secondary pitches.”
Monday was a clear example of how quickly the outing got away from him.
Pérez’s first inning lasted 22 pitches and included two throwing errors that led to two unearned runs. New York picked up another run in the second on Nick Morabito’s softly hit RBI single.
Miami briefly moved in front, 4-3, in the second, but Pérez couldn’t slam the door in the third. Marcus Semien opened the inning with a double, A.J. Ewing followed with an infield single, and Francisco Alvarez later delivered an RBI single.
The final inning brought more damage. Francisco Lindor, Juan Soto and Bo Bichette strung together back-to-back singles to bring home a run, and after two outs, Ewing lined a two-run double down the left-field line.
“There was grind, even the outs [Pérez] got,” Mets interim manager Andy Green said. “You're facing one of the best arms in baseball, and you're putting that kind of pressure on him, it was a really good day from the offense."
Pérez has already passed his previous highs in starts, with 26 compared to 20, and innings, with 139 1/3 compared to 95 1/3. Even so, McCullough said the underlying metrics still match Pérez’s season-long profile and there are no health concerns.
“We haven't had any conversations about what the back half of this month looks like,” McCullough said. “Right now, planning on getting him prepared and ready for his next start, and going into today, there were no limitations on number of pitches or innings. If it had been a different level of performance today, if it had gone different, he'd have gone deeper into this one.”
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