Miami Marlins at Cincinnati Reds

Eury Pérez is in one of the best stretches of his professional career, with a 1.80 ERA in 10 starts since returning from the injured list in June with an inner right thigh strain. But one of his biggest improvements won’t show up in a traditional box score. The 23-year-old right-hander fired six scoreless innings in the Marlins’ 7-1 win over the Reds on Sunday afternoon at Great American Ball Park in no small part because of his ability to hold baserunners in check. Pérez is a dominant force on the mound at 6-foot-8, but his longer limbs often leave him slower to home plate. Indeed, runners have stolen an MLB-high 25 bases on him this season, which tends to make bad innings worse. Entering Sunday's game, Pérez had allowed seven consecutive attempted basestealers to advance, with his last caught stealing coming on June 30. Baserunners had reached at an 89 percent success rate, too, leading field coordinator Aaron Leanhardt and pitching coach Daniel Moskos to work with him on a quick slide step. Pérez upped his usage significantly last time out, and the Pirates didn't test him at all. "I had our analysts look into some things," Moskos said. "When Eury is quicker to home plate, is he sacrificing execution, quality of stuff, velocity, in-zone rate, anything? And there was nothing there. I sat down with Eury and showed him that data and showed him that information. He was kind of blown away by it. He just expected, naturally, that when he uses a different delivery that he doesn't use all the time, he would be sacrificing something. So that gave him all the more confidence to hopefully keep deploying the quick step." The Reds, however, challenged Pérez early, with Elly De La Cruz taking off on the starter's 12th offering of the game after reaching on a leadoff walk. Pérez threw a low curveball, far from ideal to get the speedy shortstop out, but with a smaller leg lift, catcher Brian Navarreto was able to nail him at second.