Carlos Pérez (baseball)

For other people, see Carlos Perez (disambiguation).

Carlos Gross Pérez (born 1971 in Nigua, Dominican Republic) is a former pitcher in Major League Baseball and the brother of former major league players Melido Pérez and Pascual Pérez.

Biography

Pérez signed with the Montreal Expos as an amateur free agent in 1988. After being an all-star pitcher in his debut season in 1995, Pérez's career looked extremely promising. However, he soon suffered an untimely and devastating injury which forced him to miss the entire 1996 season. After rehabilitation, he re-joined the Expos in 1997 but still displayed steady showings of his all-star form. After several productive months into the 1998 season, Pérez was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers on July 31 along with Hiram Bocachica and Mark Grudzielanek for Peter Bergeron, Wilton Guerrero, Ted Lilly, and Jonathan Tucker.

By the time he became a Dodger, his once likely potential for being a dominant left-handed major league pitcher was quickly slipping away. ^{[citation needed]} Frustration grew and Pérez pitched his two worst seasons in 1999 (2-10 in only 16 starts) and 2000 he was relegated to the bullpen (after an entire career as a starter). Many fans remember a somewhat famous outburst by Pérez during a June 16, 1999 game versus the Pittsburgh Pirates at Dodger Stadium. After consecutively walking Abraham Nunez, Francisco Córdova and Mike Benjamin to load the bases in the fourth inning, Perez was removed from the game by Dodger Manager Davey Johnson in favor of Jamie Arnold. After returning to the dugout, Pérez proceeded to passionately destroy a water cooler with a baseball bat for several moments (video clips of it are still played on sports television networks when topics relating to "athlete outbursts" occur). Ironically the Dodgers went on the win the game 6-5. His performance soon thereafter, coupled with a legal issue stemming from an airplane flight in which a flight attendant accused Pérez of choking, threatening, and causing injury to her, forced him to an early exit from baseball.

Pérez may best be known for being a highly animated player, especially when he was on the mound. Beginning in his rookie year, after every strikeout he recorded (and sometimes even after individual strikes), Pérez would make spastic movements; usually flailing an arm into the air while crouching very low to the ground and hopping in a semicircle (in the case of a strikeout, Pérez would react in unity with the umpire who was signaling the strikeout motion). Sometimes batters took personal offense to it while others realized or knew that it was just part of his routine.

Perez has gone on to play in his native Dominican Republic, to play winter ball, including the Caribbean World Series (2009) as well as the 2009 World Baseball Classic.

Facts

• Pérez hit four home runs, two triples, and eight doubles in his 250 official MLB at-bats.

References

External links

• Career statistics and player information from MLB, or ESPN, or Baseball-Reference, or Fangraphs, or The Baseball Cube, or Baseball-Reference (Minors)