Nuts Notes: Perez Jr. among best in California League, Ford finding his footing as a pro
With the Modesto Nuts trailing 3-1 to the Stockton Ports on July 6 in the bottom of the sixth inning, they were in need of a pickup.
They were fresh off a July 4 20-3 win over the Ports and after a day off on July 5, nothing seemed to get going. Harry Ford and Ben Ramirez, the inning’s first two batters, were retired and Robert Perez Jr. walked from the on deck circle to the right side of the plate.
He stepped in the box with confidence.
After working the count to two balls and one strike, Perez blasted a no-doubt home run over the center field wall to give the Nuts new life and cut the Ports’ lead to 3-2 in the bottom of the sixth inning.
They don’t call him Bobby Bombs for nothing.
Perez is second in the California League in home runs (18) and leads the league in RBIs (74). He has had three games with two or more home runs this season.
“I’ve been putting in a lot of work,” Perez Jr. said. “Last year, I learned a lot and then came back here and thankfully, I’m doing pretty good. It’s a reward for all the workouts I’ve been doing.”
With more than 1,300 at bats in his career, Perez Jr. is one of the Nuts’ returners and most experienced players on the team. He began playing little league baseball at 6 years old in Venezuela and came to the United States in 2017 after signing a contract in 2016.
It sounds simple but the process of getting picked up by a major league team is anything but. Perez Jr. saw that first hand.
“I played little league and then around 2014/2015 I started at a baseball academy in Venezuela to get me ready for a contract with a professional team,” Perez Jr. said. “The Mariners saw me, sent me to some tryouts and I got a contract in 2016.
“It was a dream come true. I have been playing since I was a little kid, so to play professional baseball was super cool.”
If he hadn’t moved around enough just to get to the Mariners’ organization, he had three different stops at minor league affiliates during the 2019 season, playing three games with the AZL Mariners, 54 with the Everett AquaSox and 19 with the Tacoma Rainiers, the Mariners AAA affiliate, where he played against some current big leaguers including Jose Altuve, who was in AAA on a rehab assignment.
“I played in spring training and then in extended spring training and they told me to go to AAA to fill a spot,” Perez Jr. said. “That was super cool. They told me I was gonna play a week and then I did pretty well and they just kept me there for about a month until the short season team started.”
Perez, whose father played six seasons in the major leagues — including a stint with the Mariners in 1998 — takes his baseball background and career and pours into other players on the team as a leader.
“This is his second year in Modesto so he’s a veteran in this league,” said Nuts manager Austin Knight. “That and and just the type of person he is shows itself in a lot of different leadership ways beyond just on the field. He plays the game the right way, he’s obviously had a lot of success, but then the stuff that most people don’t get to see inside the clubhouse and the conversations that he has with younger players and the mentorship that he provides all describe Robert pretty well.”
Season Update
The Nuts didn’t have a game on Monday after finishing a home series with the last place Stockton Ports. They entered the six-game series first in the California League to start the second half of the season but after a 2-4 series, have dropped to second with a 9-6 record behind the Fresno Grizzlies (10-5), who is the California League North first-half division winner.
The Nuts finished the first half of the season just under .500 (30-36) but Knight says his ballclub learned a lot from the first 66 games. Now, they’re trying to improve on their first half pitching, hitting and baserunning numbers to put together a playoff push in the second half of the season.
“We’re so early in the second half we’re kind of in the headspace of we just got to take it a day at a time,” said Knight. “We felt like we had a good enough team to compete in the first half. Sometimes things don’t go our way so we were in the mindset of ‘Let’s keep pushing because we think we have the pieces to be successful.’”
They traveled to Lake Elsinore for a six-game series starting on Tuesday.
Harry Ford finding his footing
One thing catcher Harry Ford realized he had to adjust to quickly as a professional baseball player was the length of the schedule. The Seattle Mariners’ 12th overall pick in the 2021 MLB Draft out of North Cobb High School in Georgia, Ford, who played with the Mariners’ Rookie league team last season, has played better as the season continues.
After starting with 23 hits in 29 games in April and May, the Mariners’ No. 2 overall prospect exploded in June producing 23 hits in 22 games and five multi-hit games, with four-hit outings against the Lake Elsinore Storm and the Inland Empire 66ers.
“I’ve been mainly just getting in the swing of things and feeling comfortable, not feeling like you’re gonna have something to prove,” Ford said. “It sort of feels more like a family and more like, just coming to the ballpark … and then we started winning too. It’s been just a very big learning experience.”
Said Knight: “He’s still such a young player, so talented, we all know that, he knows that. But it’s just getting comfortable with the league, with the pitchers that we see, with himself and just trusting his abilities. The more little pockets of success that he’s seen is confirmation to him that, ‘I belong here, I can do this’, and it’s been fun to watch his progression.”
At just 19 years old, Ford is looking to build on his breakout month of June as he works towards a call up. He has a great future ahead of him but he’s staying focused.
“I’m just playing for today’s game,” Ford said of his mindset. “I feel like that’s what I do best. I’m just focused on today. I’m focused on what I got to do to get ready for today’s game. And I feel like if I can do that and have that mentality every day everything will take care of itself.”
Pitchers to watch after Fleming trade
Pitcher Will Fleming was the Nuts’ ace to start the season, but on June 27, was dealt to the Kansas City Royals with Wyatt Mills. Fleming currently plays for Royals’ High-A Affiliate Quad City River Cats. Knight has seen production and consistency from his entire pitching staff. Sam Carlson and Yeury Tatis are two players that the third-year manager says have shown potential in Fleming’s absence.
“(Carlson) was in this league last year and has had to overcome some injuries and he’s been built up and has done really well recently and Yeury Tatis has had a couple of good outings in a row.” Knight said.
Michael Morales pitched five innings in a July 6 outing against the Ports, striking out eight.
For the staff as a whole? Knight and pitching coach Nathan Banister say consistency is key.
“The best way that they can fill that gap is to just essentially just keep doing what you’re doing,” Knight said. “That’ll give us the best chance to fill that hole that we lost in (Fleming).”
