As I’m sure you’ve read by now, the feeling on the Todd Frazier return has left many with a lackluster feeling. The general consensus is that the Cincinnati Reds should have gotten more in return for the All-Star third baseman. There has been plenty of discussion about the players involved in the trade, both here and other places. What I want to do in this series is to look at the upside of what could happen with the players that the Reds acquired in the deal. Today we will look at Jose Peraza. We will look at the other two players in future articles in this series.
Jose Peraza
Let’s start out by looking at what Peraza does well. He’s got outstanding speed, one of the faster guys in all of professional baseball. That gives him the chance to steal 30-40 bases a year. He makes contact at a very high rate, striking out just 8.6% of the time he stepped to the plate in 2015 (at all levels, including his time in the big leagues). He can play defense at premium positions.
Now let’s look at the other side and look at what he doesn’t do well. He doesn’t draw walks. Part of that is because his rate of contact is so high. It’s tough to draw walks when you hit the strikes that pitchers throw you. The other part is that he tends to be overly aggressive according to the scouting reports. He also doesn’t hit for power and doesn’t project to hit for power in the future.
That gives us a generalized baseline of his skills. Who are some other players who seemed to have similar skills? The first one that jumps to mind is Jose Altuve of the Astros. The two guys wouldn’t be confused for each other if they were standing next to each other given the height of Altuve, but the profile is similar. Not much power, good defense at second base, lots of contact, low walk totals, reached the Major Leagues at a very young age, has some speed. Another comp from recent memory would be that of Juan Pierre.
Simply watching those three players at the plate, Peraza *looks* more like Altuve, as he has less of the “slap at the ball” swing than Pierre had and more of a full swing like that of Altuve. The main difference in the comp to Altuve is that in the minor leagues Altuve had way more power and drew a lot more walks than Peraza did. With that said, looking at the big league career of Altuve thus far, it does fit into the range of what you can imagine for Jose Peraza.
From a peripheral standpoint, Altuve has a 5% walk rate and a 10.5% strikeout rate in the big leagues. Neither of those seem out of whack for what you could see from Peraza. Altuve has a .110 isolated power (SLG-AVG) for his career. That may be a little higher than what you can expect from Peraza, but not by too much (though the .146 that Altuve posted in 2015 is probably more than can be realistically expected for Peraza).
In his first two-and-a-half seasons, Jose Altuve wasn’t all that valuable. He was a below-average regular who hit .285/.323/.377 with 75 stolen bases in 356 games. His strikeout rate in those three seasons was 12.2% to go along with a walk rate of 5%. In the last two seasons he’s been a well above-average player who has hit .327/.365/.456 with 94 steals. His walk rate has remained the same at 5%, but he cut his strikeout rate down to 8.6%. He’s also increased his power in that time frame.
With all of that information on Altuve, we can say that he went from a below-average regular to an above-average one by cutting down on his strikeout rate, increasing his power output and stealing more bases.
The question is, can Jose Peraza do something similar to that? For the most part, yes, it does seem that the skillset could be there to replicate most of what Jose Altuve has done.
His strikeout rate in 2015 was exactly the same as the rate that Altuve cut his strikeout rate to over the last two season. Check. His walk rate was only 3.5%, compared to 5% for Altuve, but to make up that difference it’s only one extra walk for every four weeks. That’s doable. So, there’s another check. Stolen bases jumped up for Altuve, though it was his 2014 season that looks like the outlier where he stole 56 bases. In his other three full seasons he’s stolen 33, 35 and 38. That’s right in line with where Peraza would seem to be projected. Three checks. The power output, however, is where things fall short. Altuve has always shown more power than Peraza has and that’s not something that it would seem projects well for him moving forward. No check here. On the defensive side of things, Altuve has been considered a below-average defender by the numbers (which do need to be taken with a grain of salt, as in his career he’s fluctuated between absolutely terrible in 2014 and in 2012, to above-average in 2015 with hims being mediocre in 2011 and 2013). Peraza projects to be a quality second baseman defensively according to all of the scouting reports. There’s some question as to whether he can handle shortstop, and we don’t know that the Reds will consider playing him there (they said yesterday that they view him as the future second baseman), but he should project just fine at second and there’s also a chance he could move to center field if Billy Hamilton can’t improve his offense and Peraza shows he can hit.
In the end, a Jose Altuve type of player with more defense and less power and a little less average (at least the 2014-2015 version) seems like a pretty decent comp for the upside of Jose Peraza and one that would be a pretty good player.