The Arizona Diamondbacks have agreed to send outfielder David Peralta to the Tampa Bay Rays in exchange for catcher prospect Christian Cerda, the team announced Saturday.
The 19-year-old Cerda is batting .315 with 12 RBIs and two home runs in 54 at-bats with the FCL Rays, a rookie ball affiliate.
The 34-year-old Peralta was the longest-tenured member of the D-backs and moves on from Arizona with his name high on the all-time franchise leaderboard in several categories. Peralta is third in games played, at-bats, plate appearances, hits and total bases, second in triples, fourth in RBI and sixth in runs scored, per Baseball-Reference.com.
This season, Peralta is batting .241 with 12 home runs and 41 RBIs in 87 games played.
The outfielder is in the last season of a three-year, $22 million extension he signed prior to the 2020 offseason and is set to be a free agent this winter.
Peralta was originally signed by the St. Louis Cardinals as a pitcher all the way back in 2004, but two shoulder surgeries later, he was released in 2009. He then spent over four years reinventing himself as an outfielder, a timeframe that included a stint of Peralta working at Mcdonald’s in 2011 to be able to afford a trip to his new independent baseball league team in Texas, according to Bleacher Report’s Scott Miller.
His lone link to MLB was a scout with the D-backs, one Peralta pestered consistently enough to get a workout with in 2013 after three seasons of playing independent league baseball.
That led to Peralta getting signed as a minor league free agent in July of 2013. Peralta quickly soared from Single-A to the majors within a year, and since his callup on June 1 in 2014, he’s been a mainstay in the D-backs lineup.
Peralta’s accolades across his nine years with Arizona include a Silver Slugger Award in 2018 and a Gold Glove a year later.
Without Peralta in the fold, the D-backs open up a long-term position in the outfield that will presumably soon be filled by 21-year-old Corbin Carroll, who is currently in Triple-A Reno and is the team’s top prospect. Arizona this season has already embraced a youth movement with rookie 22-year-old Alek Thomas and 26-year-old Daulton Varsho starting in center and right field, respectively.