Jose Peraza Might Be The Most Interesting Part Of That Trade

This is no doubt the most used Jose Peraza photo.

Jonathan Dyer-USA TODAY Sports

By now you know about the Bronson Arroyo trade that not only netted the Dodgers legitimate big league talent in Jim Johnson, Luis Avilan, Alex Wood, and Mat Latos, but the deal also saw the Dodgers receive a consensus top 50 prospect in Jose Peraza.

The thing about Jose Peraza, is that he’s a up the middle prospect who is 21 years old, and holding his own in AAA. The scouting reports line up on his talent, Fangraphs ranks him as the 44th best prospect in the game, Baseball America has him at 26, mlb.com has him at #30, baseball prospectus has him at #45, and minorleagueball.com has him at #31, and the stats aren’t that far behind, as he’s a 21 year old playing excellent defense and displaying good speed along with a decent bat, a 97 wRC+ is nothing to be ashamed about when you’re 6 years younger than the league average.

Peraza is a fascinating player because he’s the kinda dude who Vin Scully calls a “pest” whenever he plays against the Dodgers. Gerardo Parra, Ender Inciarte, Angel Pagan, Joe Panik. Small guys who don’t strike out and put the ball in play generally TERRORIZE the Dodgers, and Jose looks to be that type of player, his contact% sits at a stellar 87.6% this year after making contact 87.8% of the time in 2014 against higher level pitching. He also is whiffing 6.3% of the time this year which is a borderline elite figure, that contact rate (if it translates to the major leagues) would be a top 20 figure in the league, and that swinging strike percentage would be a top 30 percentage also.

Dee Gordon had significant trouble in terms of putting the ball in play on the ground and super fast to maintain high BABIP figures, Gordon got good right as he won the starting 2b job in 2014, and his batted ball readings since then are: 59.5% groundballs, 22.2% line drives, and only a 7.3% popup percentage.

Dee is the easy comparison for Peraza because at no point has  Gordon ever maintained an ISO above .100 over the course of a full season (majors or minors), while Peraza peaked at .113 in Hi-A ball and everything else has been right around 0.80. They are certainly different players in the sense that Jose puts the ball on the ground less, as he’s accumulated a 46.3 groundball percentage over the course of his minor league career, but Peraza compensates by posting minuscule strikeout rates, in his first taste against AA pitching, he struck out 7.7% of the time, and now this season in his first go around versus AAA pitching, he’s K’ing 8.2% of the time which are some really good rates.

He has issues to be worked on, a player with 70-75 type speed should put the ball on the ground ALL the time, if he does that a Gordon type player might not be unreasonable. Remember Dee Gordon is the poster child of improvement when combining above average to elite ground ball rates with game changing speed, and while it may be unreasonable to expect elite level results from Peraza, he doesn’t need to get there to be a really good player especially if he strikes out at comparable rates to his AA and AAA performance.

And heck, we haven’t even gotten to his stolen base totals, he stole 64 bases in 2013 at Low-A ball, he stole 60 bases spread across Hi-A and AA ball in 2014, and this season in AAA he’s up to 26 bases stolen. The dropoff is… odd to say the least, but his OBP has taken a dip, and maybe the positional switches have been affecting him. Plus his stolen base percentage this season would be a career high if the season ended for him at 85%. For the most part, the tools have matched the stats, and that’s all you can ask from him at this point.

So he’s an exciting, well regarded prospect that is one level away from the majors. He’s one of the better regarded second base prospects and some outlets have him number 1 in that regard, he is a fast runner with game changing speed that could potentially be on the 25 man roster come *crosses fingers* the postseason and used like 2013 Dee Gordon was in the playoffs for that year.

But you know as well as I that prospect value comes from being traded, and last night clearly showed that since mid-May, the bullpen has been struggling. Whether it’s regressing to a true talent level of “bad” or being worn out because Bolsinger and Frias probably aren’t starters long term, the bullpen could surely use another high leverage arm. Luis Avilan is literally a guy and Jim Johnson is nice, but completing the bullpen going down the stretch might be the most important thing the team does down the stretch for this season.

We saw what Koji Uehara and Mike Adams did in 2011 with the Rangers.

We saw what Koji did in 2013 with the Red Sox.

We saw very vividly what Greg Holland, Kelvin Herrera and Wade Davis did in 2014 with the Royals.

Chalk this one up to i’m just saying, but realistically, Peraza could pretty easily be used as a trade chip, and a top 50 prospect would look quite valuable to the Reds, maybe they have something that could interest the Dodgers.

Maybe the Padres would be willing to talk if the Dodgers inquired on Kimbrel and also took on Jedd Gyorko.

I DUNNO.

AJ Ramos, Brad Boxberger, Carter Capps, Jake McGee, the options are plentiful, controllable beyond this season, and the Dodgers have a surplus of talent available to fix their needs before the deadline passes tomorrow afternoon. So let us know, what do you think will happen to 2b super prospect, Jose Peraza.