Pedro Peralta is listed at 5’11” 185lbs, and he probably is decently close to the height, and I am terrible at guessing weight, but my guess is fairly close there as well. Two weeks ago, July 27, he turned 18 year old. The Phillies originally signed him back in January of 2023 for $140,000, and he was one of the youngest players in the Phillies signing classes and overall. As far as I can tell, he didn’t make it onto Baseball America’s writeup of the Phillies signing class. Last year he has a 7.20 ERA in 15 innings. After his start today he has a 6.75 ERA in 22.2 innings and that doesn’t include 12 unearned runs. In those innings, he has walked 21 and struck out 26.
I first started writing about the minor leagues back in 2012. I had just graduated college and was working odd jobs while I tried to find an actual job. In 2014, I started collecting velocity for minor leaguers in the Phillies organization. It was sourced anonymously or from people at games who either had a radar gun or were recording what it said on the board in the park. It is now 2024, I still collect all of that information, but now I have two teams (Lehigh Valley and Clearwater) that have Statcast feeds, I have home video for the complex teams in Florida and the Dominican Republic, Jersey Shore’s broadcast has an accurate velocity display, and Reading plays enough in parks with data for me to track that as well. That means that last year there was only one player who pitched that I did not have data on (Enrique Segura) and this year I am near current on all minor leaguers.
In 2014 there were 68 players with data in the spreadsheet. Of those 68, 3 of them threw a recorded pitch of 98 mph or higher (Ken Giles, Manaure Martinez, and Nefi Ogando), with only Giles breaking the 100mph mark. In 2023, there were 131 names on my list, 17 of them had a pitch of at least 98 mph, with 7 of them getting over 100. This year there are 30 pitchers with data in the spreadsheet for the DSL teams, only 3 of them don’t have a pitch of at least 90 and there are are 4 of them touching at least 96.
This is just a bunch of words to say that both the amount of data available (and available to me in the public) has exploded and with that data we can see the absolute explosion of velocity in the game.
Which is why we should return to where we started, and so let me reintroduce Pedro Peralta in case you have forgotten.
Two weeks ago Pedro Peralta turned 18. Almost exactly a year ago I have him sitting 91-95 mph. I am finishing up my third video viewing of him today with his start vs the Yankees (4 IP 4 H 5 R 1 ER 2 BB 6 K). His fastball is up a bit today from the previous two (must be the extra year), he is mostly 93-96, but has touched 98. He is throwing a distinct sweeper as opposed to my conflicting previous notes, and it looks like a plus pitch with good two plane movement and late bite. I have some changeups, a first, at 86-87, and they looked like a guy just throwing some changeups. His control is poor, especially of his fastball, and hitters seem to be able to get bat to ball, especially when he leaves it over the plate.
I would have gone wild for Peralta in 2012, I still sort of want to go wild for Peralta because of the sweeper today, but whereas a recent 17 year old throwing 97 (his last appearance) would have gone viral in Phillies prospect circles a decade ago he is more a player of interest. I assume we will see him stateside next year, but I don’t know if there is enough command there to even be a reliever.
The proliferation of data has allowed me to observe players like Peralta that I had no insight into before. It also allows me to better place them into a current context and not into what I thought a decade ago. Because it has changed and great improved, and that is nowhere more evident than the Dominican Complex, a place where opportunities continue to dwindle.
Excellent article. Thank You!