Marlins ‘creating a path’ for Eury Perez’s MLB return. Plus prospect notes on Johnston, Eder

For the first time in nearly three weeks since being optioned down to the minor-leagues in order to monitor his workload, right-handed pitcher Eury Perez appeared in a live game.

The Miami Marlins’ 20-year-old wunderkind threw 2 1/3 innings for the Double A Pensacola Blue Wahoos on Wednesday, giving up a pair of runs on four hits while striking out five. He threw 45 pitches. His fastball hit the usual upper-90s, with a few pitching hitting 99 mph, and his slider had induced its share of swings and misses.

Perez made quite an impression on the Marlins over 11 MLB starts, pitching to a 2.36 ERA with 61 strikeouts against 17 walks and a .208 batting average against over 53 1/3 innings. He pitched at least five innings and held opponents to no more than one run in eight of his 11 starts.

But Miami also went into this season knowing they would need to monitor the number of innings he pitched. He never threw more than 78 innings in a season while with the Marlins organization. After Wednesday, he is up to 86 2/3 innings. The Marlins want him available at the end of the season for a playoff push, so they chose now to slow down his workload so that he would still have innings to throw in September and, hopefully, October.

“The plan was always to get him into competition,” Marlins general manager Kim Ng said. “We’re creating a path for him to come back. We’ll take it day by day and see where the staff is, see where he is, and just make sure that we monitor this really closely.”

So does that mean the plan is for Perez to come back as a starter? Or could he possibly end up coming out of the bullpen in shorter stints to keep his innings count intact?

Ng kept that open for interpretation.

“It’s fair to say,” Ng said, “that we are building him up to compete at the big-league level.”

Troy Johnston keeps hitting after promotion

After dominating at the Double-A level for the first four months of the minor-league season, Marlins first baseman prospect Troy Johnston finally was promoted to Triple A Jacksonville last week.

His first week with the Jumbo Shrimp went about as well as could be expected.

In six games against the Gwinnett Stripers (the Atlanta Braves’ Triple A affiliate), Johnston hit .440 (11 for 25) with three doubles, two home runs, four RBI and three runs scored. He had at least one hit in all six games, including four multi-hit outings.

Prior to the promotion, Johnston posted a .296 batting average, .396 on-base percentage, .567 slugging slash line with 23 doubles, 18 home runs, 83 RBI and 71 runs scored in 83 games for Double A Pensacola this season. The 83 RBI are a single-season franchise record for Pensacola.

The left-handed-hitting Johnston is ranked as the Marlins’ No. 25 overall prospect according to MLB Pipeline, which notes that the 26-year-old “has a clean left-handed stroke and makes good swing decisions, allowing him to make consistent contract to all fields. He has enough bat speed and strength to create average raw power, but his relatively flat swing and his approach are more conducive to line drives to the gaps than flyballs over the fence. He’s making an effort to pull and lift more pitches more often but still may top out at 12-15 homers per season.”

Jake Eder continues to return to form

With each passing start this season, left-handed pitcher Jake Eder (Miami’s No. 4 ranked prospect) is looking more like the pitcher who dominated before undergoing Tommy John surgery in August 2021.

Eder’s latest outing came on Saturday, when he struck out 10 batters and allowed just two runs (one earned run) on one hit (a home run), two walks and one hit batter over 5 2/3 innings for Double A Pensacola. It was the deepest into a game Eder has pitched since returning to action in June and the 10 strikeouts are the second most in his minor-league career, behind only the 12 he had in his first-ever minor-league start on May 6, 2021.

Eder utilizes a three-pitch mix: a fastball that sits between 93-96 mph and touches 98, a low-80s slider and a low-80s changeup.

This and that

▪ Left-handed pitcher Daniel Castano, who has made 23 MLB appearances (17 starts) over parts of the past four seasons for the Marlins, threw four no-hit innings with seven strikeouts on Sunday in his first start for Triple A since March 31.

Castano made one MLB appearance between then and now on April 7 before missing two-and-a-half months with an undisclosed injury. After two appearances with the Marlins’ Florida Complex League affiliate, Castano returned to Triple A Jacksonville on June 29 and made eight appearances out of the bullpen for the Jumbo Shrimp over the ensuing month before starting on Sunday.

▪ In addition to Johnston, other notable Marlins prospects to receive promotions last week included infielder Jacob Berry (from High A Beloit to Double A Pensacola) and left-handed pitcher Patrick Monteverde (from Double A Pensacola to Triple A Jacksonville).

▪ Catcher Will Banfield has quietly been having a successful season with Double A Pensacola. Banfield is hitting .269 with a .766 on-base-plus slugging mark and has already set career-highs in home runs (13), doubles (19) and runs scored (49) over 77 games played.