The season is over for Yankees depth outfielder Everson Pereira. The 23-year-old has been on the seven-day minor league injured list since May 30. As noted by Conor Foley of the YES Network (X link), New York’s Triple-A affiliate announced this week that they’ve placed Pereira on the full-season IL. It’s not clear what the injury is or whether he requires any kind of surgery, but his season comes to a close after 40 Triple-A contests.
Pereira and the recently optioned Jasson Domínguez are the only outfielders on the 40-man roster behind the MLB quartet of Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, Alex Verdugo and Trent Grisham. Pereira would have had a hard time cracking that group even if he were healthy, but it’s not ideal to lose another four months of development reps. Pereira garnered attention towards the back half of Top 100 prospect lists at Baseball America and ESPN when he earned his first MLB call last August. The Venezuela native was coming off a huge showing between the top two levels of the minor leagues.
His stock has dipped since that point. Pereira couldn’t run with his initial major league opportunity. The Yankees played him as their primary left fielder once they’d fallen out of the playoff race in the final month. He hit .151/.233/.194 without a home run while striking out 40 times in 103 trips to the plate. Between Pereira’s rough September and Domínguez’s late-season Tommy John procedure, the Yankees went into the offseason needing to overhaul the outfield around Judge. They acquired Soto, Verdugo and Grisham to push Pereira towards the back of the depth chart.
Pereira entered the 2024 season as a divisive player on prospect lists. Keith Law of the Athletic ranked him only behind Domínguez in the Yankees system and kept him in the back half of his overall Top 100. Pereira landed sixth in the organization and in the top 100 overall at Baseball America but dropped to 17th on Eric Longenhagen’s write-up of the Yankee system at FanGraphs. Evaluators were unanimous in their praise for Pereira’s raw power and athleticism but divided as to whether he’d make enough contact to be a regular.
His first six weeks of 2024 were more of the same. Pereira drilled 10 homers with a .265/.346/.512 batting line over 182 plate appearances for Triple-A Scranton Wilkes-Barre. He fanned in nearly a third of his trips to the plate, though, pushing his strikeout rate to 29.9% in 150 games at the top two levels of the minor leagues. Pereira’s injury history is also now a mounting concern. An ankle injury cut his 2019 season short and he was limited to 49 games in 2021 (after losing the ’20 season because of the pandemic).
New York added Pereira to their 40-man roster during the 2021-22 offseason. He has spent time on optional assignment in each of the following three seasons. Most players are out of options, and therefore can no longer be sent down without first clearing waivers, after being optioned in three separate seasons. Teams are sometimes granted a fourth option year for players who have missed substantial time. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see the Yankees pursue an extra option on Pereira next offseason, though they won’t know for certain whether that’s in play until the winter. He’ll continue to count against their 40-man roster while he’s on the minor league injured list.
