A quick trip to the Baseball Savant page for Cionel Perez shows some tantalizing stuff. His fastball velocity ranked in the 87th percentile among all MLB pitchers last year, the kind of thing that you just don’t normally expect out of a 5’11” left-handed pitcher.
That kind of elite arm talent is what made him a $2 million international free agent signing by the Houston Astros back in the day, for one. It’s also what led the Cincinnati Reds to pick him up despite his obvious command issues, hoping their pitching braintrust could somehow find a way to harness things.