Oswald Peraza

Oswald Peraza was the shortstop prospect who had everything except the bat. A consensus Top-100 prospect who signed with the New York Yankees out of Venezuela in 2016, Peraza climbed the system on the strength of a glove that scouts loved more than almost anyone else's in the organization -- and then spent four seasons (2022-2025) proving that a plus glove alone doesn't keep you in the big leagues. The Yankees traded him to the Los Angeles Angels at the 2025 deadline. The bat finally started coming around after he left.

Path to the Bronx

Peraza signed as an international free agent on July 2, 2016, out of Barquisimeto, Venezuela, for a modest $175,000 bonus (pocket change even by 2016 international-pool standards). Nobody was calling him a headliner yet. That changed fast -- by the time he was 21, he'd worked his way into every major outlet's Top 100, ranked as high as #55 overall by Baseball America and #60 by MLB Pipeline entering 2022, and the consensus #2 prospect in a loaded Yankees farm system behind only Anthony Volpe.

The scouting report never wavered: twitchy actions, a plus arm, 90th-percentile sprint speed, hands good enough to handle short or third. (Scout Keith Law once called him perhaps the best defensive shortstop in the Yankees' system -- which, in a farm system that also had Volpe, is saying something.) The question was always the bat, and it turned out to be the right question.

Yankees Career

Peraza's debut came on September 2, 2022, a day after he'd homered for Triple-A Scranton and gotten the call to the big leagues. The rookie stint was a blast: .306/.404/.429 over 18 games, with a 9-game hitting streak that was the longest by a Yankee age 23-or-younger since Gleyber Torres ran off 11 straight in 2019. He made the ALCS roster that October and started Game 2, mostly for his glove (the offense wasn't walking through that door against Houston).

That hot 18-game sample was, in hindsight, close to the ceiling. In the 2023 shortstop competition, Volpe "absolutely kicked the door in and earned his opportunity," in Aaron Boone's words, and Peraza opened the year back in Scranton. He got his shot in April when Giancarlo Stanton went down with a hamstring strain, and the results were rough: .191/.267/.272 with a 49 OPS+ across 52 games, striking out 50 times in 173 at-bats. That's still technically his best Yankees season by playing time, which tells you plenty about how the whole run went.

2024 was worse before it even started -- a subscapularis strain in his throwing shoulder, diagnosed March 9, cost him 6-to-8 weeks and most of his shot at a roster spot. He played four MLB games all year. 2025 gave him the longest look of his career, 71 games and 170 plate appearances, and he hit .152 with a 27 wRC+.

The glove was never the issue. The bat, four years running, still was.

Key Moments

Where It Stands

Here's the part that stings a little: Peraza's actually hitting now. Since landing in Anaheim, he's turned into one of the more surprising stories of the 2026 season (nobody saw this coming, least of all Yankees fans who'd already written him off) -- north of an .840 OPS and a wRC+ well above league average, the kind of production the Yankees waited four years and never got. He even torched his old team in an April series at the Stadium, going deep twice and stealing a couple bags in four games. That's baseball -- sometimes the glove guy just needs a change of scenery to find the bat.