Tuesdays with Brownie: A catcher's tale

(A weekly look at the players, teams, trends, up-shoots and downspouts shaping the 2015 season.)

The adults who make these decisions in Valencia, Venezuela, took a long look at this boy, Carlos Eduardo Perez, and determined, yes, he would be a catcher, just as his older brother, Carlos Tomas Perez, was, and as his younger brother, Carlos Jesus Perez, would be.

So the adults gathered up the equipment, roughly sized it up and handed it over. Perez, like his brothers before and after him, began the life.

Some years later, Carlos – known to friends and family by his middle name, Eduardo, for obvious reasons – went to his mother to say he would not be a nurse like she was or a contractor like his father, yes, Carlos, was. He would be a ballplayer.

“OK,” Heidi Perez told her middle son, “but you have to work hard. It’s not that easy.”

Carlos Eduardo Perez, like his brothers, chose the life.

The Toronto Blue Jays signed him in 2008, when he was 17. The Houston Astros traded for him in 2012 in a 10-player deal. Eighteen months later, the Astros traded him to the Los Angeles Angels with pitcher Nick Tropeano for catcher Hank Conger. The life, you see.

Along the way, Perez became a sound defensive catcher. As a hitter, he lacked power, but hit for a decent average. He didn’t walk much, but didn’t strike out either. He began the 2012 season in A-ball and finished 2013 in Triple-A. He was gaining on it, and last winter he returned to Venezuela, signed to play for Caracas, came under the tutelage of Leones hitting coach and former big leaguer Tony Armas, and hit .329. Armas taught him to be more aggressive in the batter’s box. It made sense to Perez.

He returned to the states, impressed Angels coaches in spring training, and batted .361 in his first 17 games at Triple-A Salt Lake. Meantime, Angels catcher Chris Iannetta wasn’t hitting even .100 and backup Drew Butera wasn’t hitting .200. It was May, the Angels’ offense was not very good, their catchers had one RBI and no home runs between them, and there was this young man in Salt Lake who seemed to have a chance. They promoted Perez and traded Butera to Kansas City.

Perez made his debut May 5. In his first at-bat he singled to center field. In his last, in the bottom of the ninth inning of a tied game against the Seattle Mariners, he homered to left field.

A couple days later, Perez leaned on the dugout rail at Angel Stadium. This, he said, was the life, the one his mother promised wouldn’t be easy. She’d been right, of course. She’s always right, he said. He’d called his father when he was summoned to the big leagues, and his father – a third baseman in his day – had wept. Two nights later, the whole family and many friends gathered around a computer and watched Carlos win a ballgame for the Angels, and Carlos called home again. His father, a diabetic who requires regular dialysis treatments, picked up and before long he was crying again.

“That’s my dream,” he said. “And that’s my family’s dream too.”

He smiled at the thought of his father, once so sick but doing better today, and how easily his emotions come. His father had always said, “When you’re doing something, do it 100 percent,” and Carlos would turn on the television and watch his heroes play ball – Ivan Rodriguez, Omar Vizquel, Manny Ramirez – and understood that only 100 percent would get him there.

“He’s proud of me,” Carlos said. “I’m really happy.”

He has started four games, the Angels have won three of them, and he is batting .357.

He gestured to the huge stadium filling around him with people, plucked at the uniform he wore and grinned. It is the life, he said.

The road to super utility
The Seattle Mariners were in Anaheim, and four hours before a ballgame one of their coaches, Andy Van Slyke, stood near the mound and fungoed fly ball after fly ball into deep center field. Under them, Brad Miller circled and drifted and banana-routed and back-pedaled and over-the-shouldered and fell back and hustled in and, a long way from shortstop, hauled in most of those fly balls.

Formerly the shortstop of the future (and present), Miller, 25, had been demoted to second on the depth chart to 24-year-old Chris Taylor. The organization could have returned Miller and his .225 batting average to Triple-A, could have assigned Miller to a reserve role behind Taylor, or could have asked him to show up early every day and learn a handful of new positions.

So Miller reported to center field for an afternoon of judging fly balls and catching them.

“My vision,” manager Lloyd McClendon said, “is to see him as a Ben Zobrist-type player.”

In his two All-Star seasons – 2009 and 2013 – Zobrist played, let’s see, second, right, shortstop, left, center, first and third. He DHed. He lined the fields. We made up the last part.

“This is not etched in stone,” McClendon said. “We’ll see how it goes.”

Brad?

“Yeah, I really don’t know yet,” Miller said. “It’s premature. … I’m a professional. This is my job and they’re my boss. They said, ‘Do this,’ and that’s what I do.”

Meantime, Taylor, who hit .328 at Triple-A Tacoma and .287 in 47 games with the Mariners last season and was hitting .313 in Tacoma at the time of his promotion, was three for his first 18 in Seattle.

A pleasant surprise
The Minnesota Twins have won nine of 11 games. Perhaps that’s a product of a light schedule (White Sox, A’s and Indians), except here’s the thing: the Twins were supposed to be the light schedule. By Tuesday morning they were playing presentable ball, at 18-14 and a mere game behind the Detroit Tigers. Here comes the interesting part: three games in Detroit starting Tuesday night, followed by three against the Tampa Bay Rays, then two at Pittsburgh.

So maybe we’ll know more by next week at this time.

For the moment, though, there are a number of reasons the Twins’ season isn’t yet hopeless, starting with an offense that seems to pull runs out of nowhere, but ending, as wins and losses always do, with the bullpen.

Left-handed pitcher Aaron Thompson, who, chances are, you’ve never heard of, 10 years ago was the 22nd overall pick in the draft by the Florida Marlins, one spot ahead of Jacoby Ellsbury.

At 28 years old, he’d thrown nearly 1,000 minor-league innings and 15 major-league innings, 7 2/3 of those for the Pittsburgh Pirates four years ago. He was a starter or a long reliever, no one really knew which, but probably neither at the big-league level. He doesn’t throw hard. He bounced around some, from the Marlins to the Washington Nationals to the Pirates to the Minnesota Twins. MLB suspended him in 2012 when he tested positive for marijuana. The Twins held onto Thompson, and when Ervin Santana was popped for steroids and Mike Pelfrey took Santana’s place in the rotation on the eve of the regular season, the man who made the big-league roster as a result was Thompson.

As Thompson told reporters at the time, “It’s never boring.”

Thompson has pitched 20 2/3 innings over 16 appearances, both team highs. Lefties have batted .107 against him, righties .195. His ERA in 10 eighth-inning appearances, generally setting up for Glen Perkins, is 1.35.

After four seasons of at least 92 and as many as 99 losses, living in a division with the Royals and Tigers, and transitioning from Ron Gardenhire to Paul Molitor, the Twins would require some unexpected happy turns. So, yeah, that means Pelfrey and Kyle Gibson in the rotation, continued youth from Torii Hunter, more home runs from Trevor Plouffe, and then something a little different, and never boring, that being Aaron Thompson.

Chase for improvement
The Chase Utley situation in Philadelphia has reached, like, DEFCON 2. In spite of a two-hit weekend, which represented progress, Utley is 12 for 98 with three home runs and one double. That’s a .122 batting average and a .224 slugging percentage, which hurts no matter what and is especially damaging in the three-hole.

We’re nothing if not optimistic here, however, and there are reasons to believe Utley – beat up physically, presumably emotionally as well after that month, and every bit of 36 years old – has a little baseball life in him yet. And it’s not because Mike Schmidt says he believes Utley will turn his miserable April into a Player of the Month May. We’re not that optimistic.

Utley would seem to be seeing the ball OK. His walks per strikeout are at 0.44, which isn’t among the league leaders but is right there with Dee Gordon and Freddie Freeman, and his batting average on balls in play – the mysterious BABIP – is .101. Which is ridiculously low and suggests some really horrible luck.

As Utley told reporters after Sunday’s game in Philadelphia, “Hitting some balls where nobody is playing will be good.”

Whatever happened to …?
Remember Jesus Montero?

Big prospect, traded to the Seattle Mariners for Michael Pineda, got heavy, didn’t hit, dabbled in the Biogenesis affair, suspended for that, got into it with a Mariners scout, suspended for that, lost 50 pounds, started all over?

That Jesus Montero?

Welp, he’s playing first base in Triple-A Tacoma, batting .333 with four homers and 18 RBI in 29 games, and generally making the organization prouder. He’s still got a ways to go – two walks and 23 strikeouts are a bit jarring – and Pineda’s start for the Yankees (5-0 record, 2.72 ERA, 54 strikeouts and three walks in 46 1/3 innings) perhaps rekindles some regret in Mariners management.

But, you know, Montero is still just 25. And maybe the winner of that trade – lopsided as it appears – won’t be decided just yet.

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