There’s never been a moment in Eduardo Perez’s life when he wasn’t around baseball, the son of a Big Red Machine Hall of Famer to one of the sport’s top broadcasters with a 13-year playing career in between.
Perez will now have one of the sport’s largest platforms as one of the two analysts on ESPN’s "Sunday Night Baseball" broadcasts this year. He joins play-by-play announcer Karl Ravech and analyst David Cone in the revamped booth.
“I’ve been married for 21 years,” Perez said, “but I’ve had a life partner in baseball my entire life for my 52 years.”
ESPN shuffled its "Sunday Night Baseball" broadcast team this winter. Alex Rodriguez is moving to an alternate “Kay-Rod” ESPN2 broadcast with Yankees broadcaster Michael Kay that will be modeled after the popular Manningcast with Peyton and Eli Manning on Monday Night Football. Matt Vasgersian, the previous play-by-play announcer, is a host for MLB Network and the lead TV announcer for the Los Angeles Angels.
Perez, born in Cincinnati, grew up around the Big Red Machine before he went to high school in Puerto Rico and played college baseball at Florida State. His dad, Tony, was a seven-time All-Star first baseman. It came full circle when Perez played three seasons for the Reds from 1996-98.
“You look at the booth of Jon Miller and Joe Morgan for so many years, they represented ESPN so well,” Perez said. “I remember being in college and every Sunday our entire team would get together and watch it. To now be a part of it, I had a lot of my college teammates reach out to me and go, ‘oh my gosh, you’re going to be a part of Sunday Night Baseball' – that right there just brings it all together.”
Perez has been one of ESPN’s main baseball analysts since 2014, returning to the network after a stint from 2006-10. He often worked alongside Ravech on non-Sunday Night Baseball games and they both received contract extensions as a part of their new roles.
Mark Gross, ESPN’s senior VP for production and remote events, said there may not be a better teammate at the network than Perez.
“Science was not my strength, but if there’s a compound that mixes with everything, Eddie is that compound,” Ravech said. “You walk through airports, restaurants, getting into cars, Eduardo knows everybody, and they like him.”
Perez emphasized the focus on their broadcasts will be the players. He’ll have a natural pitcher-hitter dynamic with Cohn, the 1994 American League Cy Young winner, and both analysts hope their love of the sport will show on the broadcasts.
“You have two guys that love the game and love today’s players,” Cone said. “That’s really important, I think. In a lot of baseball broadcasts around the country, you hear a lot of ‘yeah, the game was better back when I used to play.’ That’s not the case here. I’m a huge fan of today’s players, how they go about it. It’s different than when I played, but it doesn’t mean one way was better or not. You’re going to see us genuinely get excited about today’s game at a time when that’s really needed, I think, on a national broadcast.”
Perez, who has experience on ESPN’s alternate Statcast broadcasts, has interviewed for multiple managerial openings in previous years, including Houston in 2020 and the New York Mets in 2019. Perez was a hitting coach for the Miami Marlins for two seasons and a bench coach for the Astros in 2013, plus managerial experience in the Puerto Rican Winter League and the World Baseball Classic.
What’s kept him in broadcasting?
“I grew up with just being in the on-deck circle as a kid, growing up and watching an unbelievable organization in Cincinnati and being a fan of the game,” Perez said. “ESPN allowed me to be a part of what I love and that’s baseball. If it was coaching, if it was managing, whatever it may be, I love where I’m at right now because of the teammates that I’ve always had. Tim Kurkjian would always say being a part of a team is important. This is not just work. This is a family.”
Baseball has always been there for Perez in every stage of his life and it’s no surprise he’s grateful for his newest opportunity.
“It means,” Perez said, “the world to me.”
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