By Field Level Media<\/p>\n
To further his development as a starting pitcher, the Atlanta Braves optioned right-handed prospect Didier Fuentes to Triple-A Gwinnett on Monday and purchased the contract \u200bof veteran left-hander Martin Perez.<\/p>\n
Fuentes, 20, ranked by MLB \u200cPipeline as the Braves\u2019 No. 3 prospect, threw 56 pitches over four relief innings in Sunday\u2019s home loss to the Royals, meaning he would not have been available for four or five days.<\/p>\n
Perez, who turns 35 on April 4, \u200cis \u200ba candidate to start Tuesday\u2019s home game \u2060against the Athletics, along with \u2060left-hander Jose Suarez. One will be the top long relief option for Monday\u2019s series opener.<\/p>\n
After retiring 26 of the first 27 batters \u2013 with 17 strikeouts \u2013 he faced in Grapefruit League action, \u200bFuentes held the Pirates to one run in 4 2\/3 innings in his last spring outing. In his regular-season debut, the \u2060righty allowed one run on two hits \u2060over his four innings Sunday.<\/p>\n
The Colombia native debuted \u200blast season, three days after turning 20, and he allowed 20 earned \u200bruns over four starts spanning 13 innings before being \u200csent down.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, Fuentes\u2019 fastball averaged 95.8 mph and the harder slider he has been working on since last season averaged 85.8 mph. However, Royals hitters only swung and missed at three of his \u2060fastballs and hit his slider on both swings.<\/p>\n
Fuentes didn\u2019t use the recently added changeup\/splitter in his Grapefruit League debut on March 7 but threw \u2060it 10 times \u200con Sunday while only using his slider nine \u2060times. Back at Triple-A, he will continue to \u200bwork on \u200cthe changeup\/splitter before rejoining the Braves.<\/p>\n
Perez is a \u200b14-year veteran \u2060who joined the Braves on a minor league contract in January. A 2022 All-Star with the Texas Rangers, Perez is 91-93 with a 4.41 ERA over 325 games (279 starts) for the Rangers (2012-18, 2022-23), Minnesota Twins (2019), Boston Red Sox (2020-21), Pittsburgh Pirates (2024), San Diego Padres (2024) and Chicago White \u200bSox (2025).<\/p>\n
\u2013Field Level Media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Field Level Media To further his development as a starting pitcher, the Atlanta Braves optioned right-handed prospect…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":652975,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2394],"tags":[191,46,4166,5,192,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-654176","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-atlanta-braves","8":"tag-atlanta","9":"tag-atlanta-braves","10":"tag-atlantabraves","11":"tag-baseball","12":"tag-braves","13":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116323283244008641","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654176","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=654176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}