The White Sox announced this afternoon that catcher Carlos Perez has been assigned outright to Triple-A. The 27-year-old was designated for assignment last week to make room for right-hander Chris Flexen on the 40-man roster.
Not to be confused with older brother Carlos Perez, who caught 66 games with the A’s last year in his fifth major league season, the younger Perez signed out of Venezuela with the White Sox back in 2014. Though Perez didn’t reach the upper levels of the minors until the 2021 season, the backstop has held his own with a .245/.306/.428 slash line in 190 career games at the Triple-A level and has spent the past two seasons as catching depth for the White Sox behind Yasmani Grandal and Seby Zavala. Perez made it into 34 games with the big league club since he first joined the roster in 2022, though he slashed an unimpressive .209/.254/.343 in 71 trips to the plate during that time.
The White Sox have completely revamped their catching corps this offseason as both Grandal and Zavala have departed. Youngster Korey Lee joined the club at the trade deadline last year while offseason deals have brought in both Max Stassi and Martin Maldonado. Those moves have left little room for Perez on a fairly crowded White Sox 40-man roster, prompting the club to designate him for assignment. Now that he’s been successfully passed through waivers, the White Sox have chosen to outright him to the minor leagues.
Perez has neither the requisite service time nor a previous outright assignment on his resume to allow him to elect free agency, meaning he’ll remain in the White Sox organization for the 2024 campaign as non-roster depth who could be called upon in the event of an injury or trade thinning out the club’s catching depth at the big league level at some point during the coming season.
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