Magic in baseball often comes from unexpected places, but if you’d been naming potential Rockies setup men in spring training, Joel Peralta wouldn’t have even made the conversation.
For one thing, he was still the property of the Kansas City Royals, although they would cut him on the last day. For another, the Rockies thought they were deep at the position. Between Huston Street, Manuel Corpas and Taylor Buchholz, they figured to have a closer and two setup men.
But with Corpas and Buchholz shelved by elbow problems, manager Jim Tracy called on the 33-year-old Peralta to protect a one-run lead in the eighth inning Sunday as the Rocks tried to close out an 8-1 homestand.
The former shortstop responded with a shutdown inning, striking out two of the three hitters he faced and lowering his earned-run average to a sparkling 1.54 as the Rockies won for the 16th time in 17 games.
“His stuff’s filthy,” said Street, who finished up the 5-4 victory. “I think his first outing was the only rough outing he’s really had. Other than that, he’s been pretty much lights out. He’s kind of got that gamer-type mentality.”
And no wonder. Peralta, who is no relation to Cleveland’s Jhonny, spent nearly a decade trying to fight his way to the big leagues after the A’s signed him as a 20-year-old infielder July 4, 1996.
“I was a shortstop with the A’s back in the Dominican, in the summer league,” he recalled. “I couldn’t hit at all and got released. I went home kind of thinking that I don’t have any more chance, kind of thinking that I’m probably going to retire.
“That was ’98. I thought I’d work, maybe go back to school and try to get a degree or something. But that wasn’t the first thing I was thinking. First, probably get a normal job like anybody else and try to make my living.
“But I was playing amateur baseball back home and the manager, Fausto Mejia, was the best friend that I have in baseball, in life. I was playing third base and we ran out of pitchers, and he ask me if I can pitch a couple of innings.
“So he put me in to pitch, and I threw the last two innings. When I was done, he told me I should start pitching, think about it. I said, ‘Yeah, let’s work, let’s see what happens.’ That was in December of ’98. So we start working in late December and the whole month of January. In February, the Angels saw me in a tryout, and they gave me a contract.”
For the next seven years, he rode the buses of the minor leagues. The Show almost called a couple of times, but injuries — to his shoulder, his biceps, his pinky — kept getting in the way. In 2005, the Angels finally called him up.
“It was the best time in my life,” he said. “The first day that I pitched in the big leagues was the best highlight that ever happened in my whole career. Something I’m never going to let go.”
He had his best year in 2007 for the Royals, pitching 88 innings out of the bullpen, second-most among American League relievers. But his ERA ballooned to 5.98 in ’08. When the Royals cut him at the end of spring training this year, the Rockies snatched him up and sent him to Colorado Springs.
“It’s a tribute to hard work,” said Josh Fogg, who waited for his chance alongside Peralta at Triple-A. “He showed up in the Springs this year and was effectively wild early on and then started getting in a groove, and he was our best reliever down there for a while. He’s kind of carried that over to what he’s done up here.”
Peralta hurried to note that he was only filling in as the Rocks’ setup man Sunday. Buchholz is out for the year following elbow surgery, but the team hopes Corpas’ elbow comes around with a little rest. Matt Daley and Alan Embree were ahead of Peralta until recently, and might be again.
But Sunday, when Tracy needed a bridge to Street, he called on a former infielder.
“I started to hear about Joel Peralta when we began the season with some of the game reports I listened to at Triple-A,” Tracy said. “I didn’t know who he was. I didn’t know what he looked like.”
Winning baseball teams are usually some combination of elite talent and blue-collar gamers. The gamers don’t get much easier to root for than Joel Peralta.
Dave Krieger: 303-954-5297 or dkrieger@denverpost.com
