Perez quickly put to work after arrival
OAKLAND, Calif. — Reliever Oliver Perez, active Sunday for the first time since the Astros traded for him two days earlier and wearing No. 38, knew when he got a phone call he was leaving the Diamondbacks one way or another.
“Normally you wait for Aug. 31 and after that (think) ‘I’m probably just going to stay here,’ ” Perez said of his reaction to the trade. “They just called me, and right away I thought I was going to get traded or released. Sometimes you feel bad, because you have a lot of relationships with your friends. But at the same time, I’m going to have a new experience. We’re in first place right now, and I feel happy to be here.”
Most likely to be used against the toughest lefthanders, Perez said he would be ready for any hitter, and he needed to be Sunday.
Throwing from a lowarm slot with a sliderfastball combo, Perez entered in the bottom of the seventh inning of the Astros’ 5-4 loss to the A’s with the game tied at 1 and a runner on second base.
Ike Davis, a lefthanded hitter, was the batter Perez was brought in to face, and Billy Butler, a righthanded hitter, pinch hit. He grounded to shortstop.
Perez, 34, already in his 13th season, debuted in 2002 with the Padres. The Astros are Perez’s sixth club — he pitched for the Pirates, Mets, Diamondbacks and Mariners after leaving San Diego — but he hasn’t been to the playoffs in nearly a decade.
Perez started two games for the Mets in the 2006 National League Championship Series against the Cardinals, and the last pitch he threw in the playoffs turned into a famous play: Endy Chavez robbed Scott Rolen of a home run in Game 7 with a leap at the wall in left field.
“Normally when you play baseball, you want to get a ring and I don’t have one yet,” Perez said. “My last time I was in the playoffs, that was in 2006 and I was traded (during that year from the Pirates to the Mets), too. That made me remember what happened in 2006, and I feel happy because that’s what we play for, trying to get to postseason, trying to get a ring.”