'One of a kind, one of his own': How Eury paved his way from DR to MLB

Marlins top prospect Eury Pérez needs a moment.

He is standing inside the visiting clubhouse at Clover Park in Port St. Lucie, Fla., after making his final Grapefruit League start, fielding questions about everything from his fourth-inning struggles against the Mets to the return of mentor Sandy Alcantara from the World Baseball Classic. Then he's asked why there's a heart etched into his buzzcut.

"It's the love of my family," Pérez said via interpreter Luis Dorante Jr. "I have it right there on top of my head so I have them really close to me, really present to me. They never had the opportunity to watch me pitch [professionally] before, so I always have them really close."

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To understand how Pérez came to be one of the best pitching prospects in the game, you have to go back to where it all began.

As a child, Pérez was called Palillo ("Little Stick") because of how tall and lanky he was. The 6-foot-8 right-hander now towers over his parents, Eddy and Xiomara, and two sisters, Erlin (26) and Erlenys (14), who still live in Santiago -- the second-largest city in the Dominican Republic -- in the neighborhood of Villa Liberación, La Otra Banda.

Eddy and both of Eury's grandfathers once played béisbol on the amateur level. Generations would toss a ball in a nearby field, where a young Eury fell in love with the game. Águilas Cibaeñas was their winter ball team, and Luis Polonia was their favorite player.

"Eury used to take my cleats," Eddy said with Dorante interpreting. "Imagine, he was already fitting in my cleats and using it before he started playing more organized baseball."

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At 8 years old, Eury was playing plaquita with his friends near the family's apartment. None of the kids owned equipment, so he fashioned a stick -- or vitilla -- out of a piece of wood. Eury continued with street ball leading up to his 11th birthday, when he asked his mother if he could play organized baseball.

When Xiomara signed up the youngster for the Emilio Domínguez Liga, Eury wore the jeans he arrived in to his first practice. So excited to finally play in a structured setting with his friends, he was picking up the sport at a later age in the baseball-crazed Dominican Republic.

"We wanted him to decide for himself what path he wanted to take," Xiomara said via Dorante. "At 11 years old, he promised me, he told me, 'Mommy, I'm going to make it. And once I make it, I'm going to get you out of this ghetto here, and I'm going to buy you a house. We're going to be rich, and we're going to get you out of there.'"

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During Eury's time in the little league, he and the other kids borrowed gloves from the head coach that had to be returned at the end of games. Eury wore sneakers rather than cleats. When trainer Alexander De Aza took a liking to him and brought him over to his academy at age 12, he bought Eury soccer shoes and a red Marucci glove. Finally, he had his own equipment.

La Otra Banda Field was five kilometers away, and Eury's family didn't want him walking back and forth, because he already had issues gaining weight despite eating everything off his plate -- usually meat with rice and beans, and always with avocado. Eury, who shot up like Xiomara's father during a growth spurt, compromised by coming home on Sundays for church. Still, it was tough to let the teenager go out on his own. At one point, it felt like the tight-knit family had moved in with him. On a regular basis, they would watch him play, tell him everything was OK and then wish him a good night before leaving.

"He was very, very nervous every time we were watching him play, and then when we saw that, we decided to stop going to the games," Eddy said. "It was crazy. When we went back to the games after two months, he had changed the quality of the game all the way to the roof. He was a different person playing. I was very surprised about it. I used to criticize him for crying too much. He was very sensitive, very sensitive kid. But he used to cry every time he was taken out of the game.

"I used to argue with him like, 'Why are you like that? You can't do that like that.' But people also told me, 'Don't argue with him because of that, because every time somebody scores and they take him out of the game, he's crying because he feels the value inside of him going down. He thinks he's not worth it. That sentiment of the game you cannot take away.' I stopped telling him not to do that and supported him fully."

De Aza also paid for Eury to travel to tournaments, like the one he attended in Arroyo, Puerto Rico. The best players from Santiago were recruited for the international competition, and the experience gave Eury his first taste of playing outside of the Dominican Republic.

"He always saw something [in me]," Eury said of De Aza. "Worked with me on mechanics, teaching me how to do several things in the game, how to go about the game, the business of the game, and I'm still in touch with him. ... He taught me a lot in the beginning of my career, and I'm very grateful for everything."

Reel in the big fish

Angel Izquierdo was trying to get into scouting in 2018, when he bought a cheap camera on Amazon that scouts told him they used. One of the first places he recorded video was at a Cibao team event at Estadio Bragaña Garcia in Moca, Dominican Republic. At this particular showcase, a 15-year-old Eury was all business on the mound. Although his fastball maxed out at 83 mph, he was striking out hitters. Though Izquierdo was new to scouting, he said it was too obvious not to recognize something special was afoot.

"Eury was one of a kind, one of his own," Izquierdo said. "It was like all the kids, and then Eury. You can see when Eury was pitching, everybody was standing up, recording this guy. And I'm like, 'OK, I'm not crazy, because everybody's seeing what I'm seeing.' More advanced scouts knew but had scouting words of what I'm seeing. I was just looking at a diamond, a kid that was easy with this body, this kind of coordination, his motion with this body."

As Izquierdo developed relationships with trainers and scouts, he sent footage to teams. The first thing they would ask for was the name of a prospect Izquierdo liked. He would provide Eury's, even though Eury was seemingly unavailable.

But concerns emanating from Eury’s physical led the Red Sox, then the Rockies, to move on from him. And when word got around that Eury was available again, Izquierdo was in the process of being interviewed by the Marlins for an international area scouting job. Izquierdo recommended to De Aza that Eury be brought to the newly hired scout’s first tryout.

Little did he know that Miami had already identified Eury, shortstop Jose Salas and outfielder Ian Lewis as priority targets. The Marlins would host that trio and others at their old complex in Santo Domingo in January 2019 with upper-level talent evaluators present.

Position players ran the 60-yard dash, performed infield and outfield throws, took batting practice and appeared in a live game. Eury and the dozen or so other pitchers in attendance warmed up in the bullpen and were inserted into the game. Izquierdo nervously sat behind home plate.

"When I got in there, I saw Salas and Lewis and I was like, 'They came to see them, not me. This is their show, this is what they want,'" Eury said. "I think they did it on purpose to challenge me to get them out because -- again -- they were the favorites of that class."

Eury, who had participated in a showcase with the Angels the day before, threw 25 pitches while facing five batters, including Salas and Lewis. He didn't allow a hit. When Eury stepped off the mound, Adrian Lorenzo, who would later become the Marlins' senior director of international operations, came up to Izquierdo to ask whether that was the kid he had been talking about. Lorenzo had liked what he had seen.

An international operations intern at the time, David Hernandez Beayne was in charge of collecting and organizing data. Though Eury's velocity didn't stand out, his high spin rate, high vertical break and perfectly located pitches lent himself to the most swings and misses of any pitcher that day. The Marlins also ran tests, which explained the impressive results: Eury's flexibility was off the charts; he could put his fingers all the way back to his wrists. Miami believed Eury could grow into his body. In turn, his fastball velocity would increase.

"To have the body control, the coordination, the mobility, the flexibility, the power to repeat and do what he does, you don't find that, you don't see that," Hernandez Beayne said. "It is extremely rare. Normally you see that in smaller guys, but at his size, it just doesn't happen. And that's what happens when you mix that size with that skill set. You get something special."

In a post-tryout conference, Eury's name was the first brought up by Marlins personnel. Miami called De Aza to make an offer. But Eury also had one from the Angels and was planning to visit them the next morning to close the deal.

Before that could happen, Izquierdo linked up with De Aza and Eury at an ice cream shop. While Eury ate his chocolate ice cream, Izquierdo asked what it would take for the pitcher to join the Marlins.

Following that meeting, Izquierdo traveled two hours to Santiago, where Xiomara said her son's health and studies were what she cared most about. It was evident to Izquierdo that Eury's maturity could be traced back to his upbringing. At 9 p.m., Izquierdo shook hands with Eddy and Xiomara and said goodbye. Little did Izquierdo know that his persistence and the trust that he had built over time had won them over.

"'I hope the next time I shake hands with you, it's because Eury is a Marlin,'" Izquierdo told them before leaving.

Rising crop on the farm

Had baseball not worked out, Eury likely would've followed Eddy's footsteps as a mechanic. When the Marlins gave Eury a signing bonus of $200,000 on July 2, 2019, 50 percent went to his trainer De Aza -- something that is common practice in the Dominican Republic. The family wanted him to save the other half. But Eddy was laid off from his job, and Eury insisted on buying his dad his own shop.

"When he signed, part of it was, we didn't want to do the same thing as some of the parents do -- just take the whole thing and just use the money for all the stuff that was needed at the time," Eddy said. "I told him, 'Hey, we're going to take this, and we're going to freeze it, we're not going to touch it.' But later on [in] situations of life, I was let go from my job. He was part of the whole decision that he wanted to use this to get the shop.”

At the Marlins' Dominican Academy, Eury blossomed. He would wake up at 6 a.m. and head to breakfast by 6:30. Then it was time for high school and English classes. In the afternoon, there was a stop in the training room before practices or games.

When the COVID-19 pandemic halted normal operations, Eury developed his body by focusing on arm strength and conditioning. With so much uncertainty as to when baseball would pick up again, Eury wanted to be ready.

Most weekends, instead of making the 2.5-hour drive home to Santiago to visit his family, he focused on his development. Plus, every time Eury arrived, his mom would get sad saying goodbye, and so would he.

"There were some times I needed to remind myself what I was getting into and the dream, what it's all about," Eury said. "But now, I don't feel anything like that, because I know what I'm here for and what dream I'm chasing, and what dream I'm about to reach."

Now the Marlins' assistant director of international scouting, Hernandez Beayne recalls Eury making a mark in the Parallel League, where recent international signees compete in action running parallel to the Dominican Summer League. Eury, who boasted a mid-80s fastball when he signed, had started hitting 95 mph on the radar gun by the age of 17.

How did it happen?

Hernandez Beayne cites a combination of factors: Eury always had the size as well as the body control, mobility and flexibility. Now, he had the professional guidance. Eury also became more in tune with his body, and thus more athletic and explosive. Since Eury hadn’t joined an organized league until age 11, his arm was fresher.

"He started kind of turning heads and people started realizing like, 'Wait a minute, this prospect is a little bit different than all other ones that we've seen before,'” Hernandez Beayne said. “I feel like at that point, that was him really kind of scratching the surface into becoming what he is now: one of the top prospects, and a guy that projects to make it to the big leagues relatively soon, and we all believe has a very bright future as well."

A dream nearly fulfilled

Standing 6-foot-4 and 175 pounds when the Marlins signed him, Eury added four inches and 45 pounds by the time he made his pandemic-delayed pro debut at Single-A Jupiter in 2021. He posted a 1.61 ERA across 15 starts to warrant a promotion to High-A Beloit, where he started five games.

Miami challenged Eury by assigning him to Double-A Pensacola to begin 2022. He dominated competition five years older until a lat strain cost him two months and inflated his ERA to 4.08 in 17 starts. Still, Eury participated in the SiriusXM All-Star Futures Game and helped the Blue Wahoos capture the Southern League championship.

Eury's deceptive upper-80s changeup generates a high swing-and-miss rate, and he has added a mid-80s slider that grades as a plus pitch. With that type of repertoire, Pérez has drawn comparisons to fellow countryman and Marlins ace Alcantara. Not only do they have similar arsenals -- Eury is merely missing the 27-year-old right-hander's sinker, the veteran quips -- but they also share the same agent. Eury is one of the few people who makes the 6-foot-5 Alcantara look small.

Over the offseason, Eury trained with Alcantara upon the organization's recommendation. He then followed Alcantara around like a shadow during his first big league camp, so much so that members of the front office and teammates alike jokingly called him Alcantara's son.

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All kidding aside, Alcantara knows what it's like to be a top prospect. Signed by the Cardinals out of the Dominican Republic in 2013, the flamethrower was the centerpiece of the Marcell Ozuna trade in '17. Five years later, Alcantara became the first National League Cy Young Award winner in Marlins history.

"I remember when I came to my first Spring Training with St. Louis, I got the opportunity to be with [Adam] Wainwright, Carlos Martinez," Alcantara said. "Chris Carpenter was working there, too. Those guys, the guys who've been in the league for 15 years or more, the only thing that they told me was, 'Don't be late. Work hard. Be patient. Believe in yourself. If we do it, you can do it.' That's what I want to tell everybody. If I do it, they can do it. There's nothing impossible in this life. You've got to be patient and put everything in God's hands."

As a Christian family, the Pérezes believe that putting their faith in God led Eury to Alcantara. Throughout Eury's playing career, the family has had to place their trust in others. Since Eury moved into the Marlins' academy in Santo Domingo, his family has only had the chance to visit him once -- for his graduation in 2019. They have never seen him pitch in person, though they do watch available games on MiLB.TV.

On Sundays, they have a family video chat. Eury texts or talks to his mom every day. Dad texts every two days. Eury makes up for the time apart by living with his parents every offseason. It's easy to forget Eury only just turned 20 on April 15. That’s the age of most sophomores in college.

Now the family will come together again, at loanDepot park on Friday. Xiomara laughed, then started to cry just thinking of her hijo achieving his dream back in March.

When Eury makes his highly anticipated MLB debut against the Reds, people throughout his journey will be there to celebrate. And just in case they need reminding of how much they mean to him, Eury is likely to have that heart shaved into his head again.

"We always think about it," Eddy said. "It's a moment that we're always hoping and praying to God that will come true, and it will be a great moment for all of us here, and of course for him."