Detroit Tigers prospect Wenceel Perez has made some significant changes.

For over 20 years, the West Michigan Whitecaps served as the Detroit Tigers Low-A affiliate, fielding rosters filled with inexperienced international signees, late-round college players, and the occasional highly ranked high schooler.

But minor-league realignment turned the Whitecaps into Detroit’s High-A affiliate last year, putting the entire team under a microscope. West Michigan was now the place to see top college draft picks make their professional debut. Detroit’s top two picks in the 2020 draft, Spencer Torkelson and Dillon Dingler, spent six weeks with the 2021 Whitecaps before hitting their way to Double-A. 

One of the few names held over from the Low-A days was Wenceel Perez. Perez, who was an international signing back in 2016, has seen time with West Michigan in every season since 2018 (he started in Low-A Lakeland in 2021, playing in 23 games before being promoted).

Perez was just 18 when he first joined West Michigan. The switch hitting infielder arrived in August 2018 and hit .309 over 16 games to end the season, with a walk rate of 2.8% and a wRC+ of 109. But after that, his hitting was inconsistent. He hit just .211 through the first three months of 2019, but from August 12th to the end of the season, Perez hit .291 (19-for-79). Still, he finished the year with a lackluster wRC+ of 81.

Perez made a slight change to his swing from 2018 to 2019, eliminating the small toe tap he used as a timing mechanism (you can see it at 0.12 second mark in this video courtesy of Jay Markle).

Getting rid of the toe-tap didn’t seem to alter his production in any real way, as his numbers at West Michigan in 2021 (wRC+ of 84) were just barely better than his production from 2019.

But Perez’s numbers have taken a huge leap in 2022, culminating in a promotion to Double-A Erie two weeks ago, and there are several reasons to believe the improvement is real.

Perez Looking Fly

I looked at videos going back to 2018, and asked Chris Brown and Trevor Hooth to do the same, watching for any mechanical changes to show why Perez’s swing seems to be so much more productive this year. His stance looked a little more upright in the past, but otherwise, there weren’t any obvious visual clues.  His average exit velocity is at 88MPH while he has maxed out at 110MPH. 

This is from the instructional league from 2020: To me, he looks like his posture has him slightly hunched over.

But if we dig into his batted-ball data, the changes are drastic.

Last season Wenceel Perez had the 2nd lowest fly ball rate (27.1%) among qualified hitters in the Detroit Tigers minor-league system, with a middle-of-the-pack line drive rate (20.1%), and the 2nd highest ground ball rate (52.7%).  

In 2022 Perez has the 8th highest fly ball rate in the system (40.8%), and his ground ball rate has dropped to 36.3%, which is the 7th lowest in the system among batters with at least 140 plate appearances. In 2021 he hit 1.94 ground balls for every fly ball. This year that number has dropped to 0.89. It looks like Wenceel Perez has joined the launch angle revolution.

And perhaps the most impressive aspect of Perez unlocking his power this year is that it hasn’t seemed to affect his plate discipline in any way. In 2021 he posted a walk rate of 9.0% and a strikeout rate of 17.9%, with a 9.1% swinging strike rate. So far this season he owns a 10.6% BB rate, a 17.0% K rate, and an 8.7% swinging strike rate. His walke rate has taken a dip to 6% through 10 games in Erie, but that seems understandable as he adjusts to better pitching. 

Changes in approach?

Whether it’s the organization telling him to abandon his previous slap-and-run approach, or just a natural evolution for Perez to hit the ball more in the air, it’s working enough that he could earn a spot on the 40-man roster in 2022.

Perez came up as a shortstop, but he hasn’t played there since 2019. He has played some third base this year, but his primary position this season has been at second base, though with 20 games as designated hitter, his best position might be the batter’s box.

Perez is still very much a work in progress on defense. He has made 9 errors in just over 300 innings of work, and most of them have been of the throwing variety. But Wenceel Perez does not turn 23 until October, so there’s still plenty of time to work on his defense. And even if he can’t make the necessary adjustments, he’s a good enough athlete to handle a move to the outfield, and he’s hitting enough this year to make a viable alternative. 

Overall, Perez has the potential to give the Detroit Tigers what they have lacked for a while now: a serviceable positional player from their Latin America player development system.