Geraldo Perdomo first came up to the major leagues for a cup of coffee in 2021, and has been the Arizona Diamondbacks full time starting shortstop since the 2022 season. He made the National League All-Star team in 2023 at the age of 23, and starred in the Postseason, batting .275 with a couple of big home runs.
In 2024 he put together a 3.5 bWAR, 2.0 fWAR season in just 98 games after missing two months due to arthroscopic knee surgery. That included a career best batting line of .273/.344/.374, .718 OPS. That was almost exactly league average batting production (100 OPS+) from a player that displays above average skills at shortstop.
So far in the first 16 games of 2025, Perdomo has appeared to take things to another level, and may just be breaking out into a bonafide star. He’s batting .333/.448/.490, .938 OPS, which works out to a 166 OPS+ or roughly 66% above league average. He has two doubles and two homers. One of those homers was a grand slam from the right side, the first in his career batting right-handed.
Perdomo’s batting eye has been better than ever, as he’s drawn 13 walks and and struck out just two times. That 6.5 BB/K ratio is by far the best in the MLB, with the next closest being 2.25.
While Perdomo is not likely to maintain such lofty batting numbers, there are signs of a real breakout in the underlying metrics that indicate he’s taken a real step forward in his offensive prowess.
He’s had hot streaks in the past, but his output was always marked by batted ball and expected metrics that seemed to suggest he was likely to regress from his established batting line. For example, in 2023 Perdomo had a .319 wOBA but just .275 xwOBA. Similarly, in 2024 he had a .317 wOBA but .281 xwOBA.
Perdomo’s current wOBA is .410, and it’s supported by an eye-popping .398 xwOBA. This stands out as a leap forward at the plate, with underlying metrics that support it.
wOBA, or weighted on base average, is a metric that is scaled to On Base Percentage, but takes into account the different values of all batting events, i.e., singles, doubles, triples, homers, walks, strikeouts, double plays, etc, weighting each of them properly to create a catchall offensive number.
Baseball Savant’s Statcast then creates xwOBA, which measures the expected wOBA. Their website explains xwOBA as follows:
“Expected Outcome stats help to remove defense and ballpark from the equation to express the skill shown at the moment of batted ball contact. By looking at the exit velocity and launch angle of each batted ball, a Hit Probability is assigned based on the outcomes of comparable historic balls in play.
“By accumulating the expected outcomes of each batted ball with actual strikeouts, walks and hit by pitches, Expected Batting Average (xBA), Expected Slugging (xSLG), and (most importantly)Expected Weighted On-Base Average (xwOBA) tell the story of a player’s season based on quality of and amount of contact, not outcomes.”
Perdomo’s Hard Hit rate (any ball hit over 95 MPH exit velocity) has jumped from a career 23% to 32%. His average exit velocity has gone from 87 MPH to 89 MPH. His Barrel rate is up too, from 3.1% to 3.7%. All of the harder contact is likely due to an increase in bat speed, from 67 to 69 MPH.
But perhaps most important of all, Perdomo’s Launch Angle Sweet Spot has leapt into the 97 percentile. That is a ball with a launch angle between 8-32 degrees. These are the trajectories most likely to produce a hit.
Thus the combination of bat control along with a faster swing is producing a marked increase in the quality of contact, making his above average batting line appear much more sustainable than in the past.
Throughout his young career, Perdomo has done all the little things right as well. While many of the attributes he brings are considered “intangibles,” in fact some of those are quite measurable. He works long at-bats, and typically sees well above the league average number of pitches (4.1 per PA vs 3.9 league average).
Perdomo led the league in sacrifice hits in 2022 and 2023, and currently leads the league in both sac hits (2) and sacrifice flies (3). He doesn’t steal often, but he’s a heady, high percentage base stealer, having snagged 36 bases in his career while getting caught seven times (84% success). He takes the extra base whenever available, and has tallied 11 baserunning runs above average in his career.
Beyond these attributes, Perdomo has become the clear leader on the infield, directing traffic, making timely mound visits, and keeping the other infielders engaged. He is Torey Lovullo’s go-to guy in all situations on the dirt, and the one he places the biggest burden of trust with in tight moments.
For these reasons and more, the Diamondbacks worked out a four-year, $45 million contract extension with the 25-year-old during spring training. There is a fifth year option that could keep Perdomo with the team through 2030.
While the organization likely saw some additional upside in his batting profile, the player Perdomo already was coming into 2025 is well worth that extension. If his improvements at the plate are even somewhat sustainable, and he ends up a 110 to 120 OPS+ hitter (10-20% better than league average), this extension will end up being a home run for the Arizona Diamondbacks.
