Atlanta Braves Morning Chop: the strange career of Gerald Perry
It happened during an era that was more about Dale Murphy, but there was another budding Atlanta Braves star who kept taking odd turns along his way.
In the 1978 draft, the Atlanta Braves did rather well. Six of their picks made the majors, and 3 of them had careers that spanned 9+ seasons in the majors.
The marquee name was first overall pick Bob Horner, but 3rd rounder Steve Bedrosian is definitely a name instantly recognizable among long-time Braves watchers.
But it was in the 11th round that Atlanta picked up a high school kid from Savannah (and then Hilton Head) that could play first base along with some outfield… Gerald Perry.
Perry’s minor league career spanned late 1978 through 1982 (for the most part), pretty much going ‘station-to-station’… one year per level. He wasn’t the kind of physical specimen that you’d of as a 1st baseman – being listed at 5’11” and 180 lbs. – but he held to both that spot and left field for most of his career.
His hitting was good – not great – but solid enough to get to an overall .295 level with the promise of some power – 82 homers in 792 games.
It was also enough to have BaseballAmerica place him 5th in their lists of Braves’ prospects for both 1983 and 1984.
All of that got Perry a promotion to the big leagues in August 1983 – going 1 for 4 against the Giants during a pennant race.
The Braves fell short of the Dodgers that year (by 3 games), but manager Joe Torre saw enough that he liked in Perry (he hit .359 down the stretch over 45 plate appearances with a higher walk rate than strikeouts) to give him a much more regular job in 1984.
In that ’84 season, Perry got 419 plate appearances and hit .265 for the year. He stole 15 bases (though was caught a dozen other times), hit 7 homers, and knocked in 47 runs. With a .372 OBP, that all added up to a .743 OPS as a rookie… not half bad for an 11th round pick.
The Roller-coaster
1985 was a year in which the bottom essentially fell out.
Baseball is a hard sport. There’s a lot involving skills, but it’s also about preparation, mental readiness, and the ability to ignore your past when it doesn’t help your future.
There are positions on the field in which players are normally thought of as power contributors. Perry played two of these: left field and first base. In 1985, though, his power and his hitting – never the best parts of his game anyway – completely betrayed him.
- April: no extra base hits, 2 RBI… and only 4 hits period
- May: 3 doubles, 1 homer, 3 RBI.
- June: no extra base hits, 1 RBI… only 3 hits at all
- July: 1 single… 1 RBI… both on July 31.
The RBI droughts were so notable that the TBS broadcasters were keeping track… and noting it virtually every day.
His next RBI came on August 26th before he started to rally a bit over the last 3-4 weeks of the season. It seems a quirk of math that he managed to hit .214 for the year… especially after starting with a .125 clip in April and an RBI-less streak from June 15-July 30 (and only 1 until Aug 26).
If you’re wondering how Perry even kept his job with all that going on, it’s because the Atlanta Braves opted to fire their manager instead. Torre had already been relieved of his duties after the ’84 season, but replacement Eddie Haas didn’t do any better (50-71)… nor did his interim replacement Bobby Wine (16-25).
But changes did eventually trickle down, and Perry was sent back to AAA for most of 1986… though it also produced the best numbers of his entire professional career: a .924 OPS and .326 batting average.
That hot streak continued as he returned to the majors for twice – late May through mid June and from mid-September to the end of the year), hitting .271 and driving in 11 runs… nearly as many as he’d provided during all of 1985 (13).
Keep it Rolling
Whatever Perry figured out in 1986 continued in 1987 and ’88. In fact, he was so good for the first half of 1988 (.337/.380/.443/.823) that he made the All-Star game.
Again, excellent hitting, though still not a great power threat.
After that notable event? A seventy point drop in his batting average to .265. for the back half of the year. Over the full season, that still made Perry a .300 hitter at the major league level, though the Braves were clearly starting to scratch their heads about him.
In 1988, though, batting .300 was still good enough to rank him 5th in the NL batting chase (Tony Gwynn won that year… that’s no surprise, but his .313 was notable in that it was the lowest mark for a batting champ in the history of the NL).
Perry – a left-handed hitter – was definitely better against right-handed pitching, though a .270 clip against lefties that year still wasn’t terrible. All of that together got him yet another year in Atlanta.
1989 saw Atlanta experimenting with a number of solutions at first base – 9 different players saw time there, though Perry was still getting the plurality of innings. But nothing really worked there, and with Lonnie Smith having a career year in left field, 1st was Perry’s only position option.
Perry hit .252… and then the Braves let him go.
After Atlanta
The Royals picked up Perry for the 1990 season. He played in 133 games for them, batting .254 for an 80-81 club whose General Manager happened to be John Schuerholz… who resigned after that season to move South.
In 1991, the Cardinals picked up Perry and gave him parts of 5 seasons as a player with a diminishing role through 1995, appearing in 109, 87, 96, 60, and 65 games.
His hitting continued to be a mystery, with averages of .240, .238, .337, .325, and .165.
Ah, but it wasn’t much of a mystery to St. Louis as he was used almost exclusively against right-handers from 1992 onward. Once that platoon experiment fell flat in 1995, Perry was done (plus, but that time they also had Ron Gant and John Mabry to more ably fill Perry’s positions).
Gerald Perry’s final game in the majors came on August 24, 1995 – a couple of months short of his 35th birthday.
An Improbable Journey
It’s almost hard to believe that a position player could gain over 10 years of service with stats like Perry had overall: -0.1 WAR as measured by baseball-reference; 0.5 by fangraphs.
He was just good enough in multiple years to continue to get lease renewals, but then lapsed back into the role of an occasional singles hitter who couldn’t solve left-handed pitching.
There have been something over 19,500 major league players as mapped by baseball-reference (Austin Riley was #19,504).
There have been just 38 hitters over these 140+ years of MLB play that have a negative bWAR while still managing to hang around for 1,000 games.
Gerald Perry has the 16th most games played on that list.
Other names you might recognize: Wes Helms (12th), Yuniesky Betancourt (18th), Rafael Belliard (19th), Greg Norton (25th), Juan Castro (26th), Cito Gaston (33rd).
I was going to suggest that it might be difficult for a player to do this ‘feat’ in this era of play… except that 8 players on the list finished up their careers since 2000.
It seems that role players still have a … role… in this game.
Still – in a sport with a lot of ups and downs, Gerald Perry managed to carve himself a niche in the history of a couple of teams over a 13 year period… and he’s been working occasionally as a coach in the years since.
dark. Next. Moose ... and Squirrel?
He’s an oddity, no doubt – but good on him for the effort to stick with it for as long as he did.