Martin Perez was fooling Twins hitters all afternoon Monday. So when the White Sox left-hander struck out Ty France with an 85.7 mph cutter in the sixth inning to wrap up his day, he simply screamed with a steely expression.
Hurling a gem in his season debut — a 9-0 Sox victory — Perez matched a career high with nine strikeouts in six scoreless innings before Willi Castro’s single against rookie reliever Mike Vasil ended the Sox’ bid at a no-hitter in the seventh.
Perez got 11 called strikes on his cutter and seven on changeups. He walked three batters.
“The way I was competing with my pitches, I was moving the ball good, and that is the key for me,” said the veteran journeyman, who signed a one-year deal with the Sox in January. “I don’t have the velocity anymore, but I know how to pitch, and I know how to move the ball.”
Perez walked Ryan Jeffers and hit France with a pitch in the fourth but got out of the jam with a cutter in the heart of the zone to strike out Jose Miranda looking.
“He knows how to pitch,” Sox manager Will Venable said. “We talked about it before, and I’ve seen it a lot. And to have him continue this nice run of starting pitching was great.”
The starting staff as a whole has been impressive to start the season, with 23 scoreless innings over four games. The offense had been another story, failing to do much after scoring eight runs against the Angels on Opening Day. But on Monday, the Sox got after Twins starter Chris Paddack (0-1), forcing him out after scoring all nine of their run against him in 3⅓ innings — including three-run homers by Andrew Vaughn and Andrew Benintendi in the first and second, respectively, and a two-run blast by Michael Taylor in the third.
With the Sox already up 9-0 in the fourth, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli brought in pinch-hitters for stars Byron Buxton and Carlos Correa.
“We’re going to have to have games like that,” Venable said. “We’re going to have to have the games where we have the situational hitting, and they may be low-scoring games. But having multiple ways to score and win games is important, and for our offense to be able to hit some homers and score runs in bunches like that is huge.”
The Sox’ defense has held up well, with shortstop Jacob Amaya in particular making impressive grabs, such as a leaping catch in the first inning Monday to rob Correa of a hit.
But the starting pitchers, who have yet to allow an earned run through four games, have led the team so far. Perez, who turns 34 next week and has thrown 1,581‰ career innings to Sean Burke, Jonathan Cannon, Davis Martin and Shane Smith’s 273‰ combined, has embraced being a leader for the rotation and commended his younger teammates for being inquisitive.
“I’ve been around for so long, and I just want to tell the guys how they need to prepare and how long the season is,” Perez said. “I remember there were a lot of people who said we’re not a contending team, but now we show them that we are better than last year and we are playing better baseball.”