{"id":652651,"date":"2026-03-30T15:30:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T15:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/652651\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T15:30:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T15:30:16","slug":"braves-select-martin-perez-option-didier-fuentes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/652651\/","title":{"rendered":"Braves Select Mart\u00edn P\u00e9rez, Option Didier Fuentes"},"content":{"rendered":"

10:25am: Fuentes will start for Gwinnett on Friday, per MLB.com\u2019s Mark Bowman<\/a>. He\u2019ll get a couple minor league turns to build up to around 90 pitches and then be more strongly considered for the big league rotation.<\/p>\n

8:48am: The Braves announced Monday morning that they\u2019ve selected the contract of veteran lefty Mart\u00edn P\u00e9rez<\/a> from Triple-A Gwinnett. Right-hander Didier Fuentes<\/a> was optioned to Gwinnett to clear a spot on the active roster. Atlanta already had a 40-man vacancy, so Fuentes is the only corresponding transaction needed.<\/p>\n

Some fans will bristle at optioning Fuentes after he shined with four innings of one-run ball in long relief yesterday, but that four-inning appearance means he\u2019d have been unavailable for the next few days anyhow. He\u2019ll surely be back in the fold before long, but the Braves will presumably be cautious with his workload this season. He pitched only 70 innings total between the minors and major leagues last year.<\/p>\n

P\u00e9rez, 35 next week, signed a minor league deal over the winter and was in the mix for a rotation spot this spring \u2014 particularly after Spencer Schwellenbach<\/a>, Hurston Waldrep<\/a>, Joey Wentz<\/a> and Spencer Strider<\/a> went down with injuries. He had a nice Grapefruit League showing, working to a 2.84 ERA in 12 2\/3 innings, but Atlanta reassigned him to minor league camp to begin the season. Unsurprisingly, it wasn\u2019t an especially long stint. He can now step into the same long relief\/swing role that Fuentes held, providing some length behind out-of-options starters Bryce Elder<\/a> and Jos\u00e9 Suarez<\/a>. Alternatively, the Braves could move either Elder or Suarez to a swing role and go with P\u00e9rez in the rotation.<\/p>\n

A flexor strain knocked P\u00e9rez out for most of the 2025 season, but he was sharp in his limited action with the White Sox. He tossed 56 innings with the South Siders, his seventh career team, and logged a 3.54 earned run average. P\u00e9rez fanned only 19.3% of his opponents against a 9.6% walk rate. He\u2019s never missed many bats but has generally held his own through sharp command, solid ground-ball tendencies and plenty of weak contact.<\/p>\n

Atlanta will be P\u00e9rez\u2019s eighth career team. He\u2019s been a steady back-of-the-rotation starter for a good while now, starting a full slate of 12 games in the shortened 2020 campaign and making between 20 and 32 starts in the other five seasons from 2019-24 (while pitching to a collective 4.27 ERA). Last year marked the first time since 2018 that P\u00e9rez required a trip to the 60-day injured list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"10:25am: Fuentes will start for Gwinnett on Friday, per MLB.com\u2019s Mark Bowman. He\u2019ll get a couple minor league…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":652652,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,25196,370],"class_list":{"0":"post-652651","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baseball","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-didier-fuentes","10":"tag-martin-perez"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116318845517356368","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}