The Spanish national team branch in Nettuno, Italy gets bigger. The Italian Baseball League club Danesi Nettuno announced on Friday the signing of outfielder Luis Julian Perez, who comes from the Division de Honor champion Tenerife Marlins Puerto Cruz. The 26-year-old from Caracas, Venezuela with a Spanish passport joins his teammates with the Spanish national team Dewis Navarro, Remigio Leal and Yoel Hernandez at his new home.
Perez signed with the Oakland Athletics organization in 1999 as an undrafted amateur free agent. He played for minor league teams of the A’s from 2002 to 2006, but couldn’t get past Single-A advanced, even though he hit .334 (OBP .374/SLG .474) in his last season. In 2008 he returned to the US to play for independent league teams in Lincoln and Lancaster.
With the Tenerife Marlins, Perez led the team with a .432 batting average (OBP .481/SLG .758) in 23 games. He hit seven homeruns, scored 22 runs and drove in 25. Manager Mauro Mazzotti nominated Perez for the Baseball World Cup, where he batted .313 (OBP .476/SLG .750) with three homeruns, eight runs and six RBI in ten games for Spain.
Danesi Nettuno officially starts its preparations for the 2010 season this weekend. Managers Giampiero Faraone and Guglielmo Trinci will gather the players of the IBL1 and the IBL2 teams for the first workouts. The European Champions Cup winner of the past two seasons hopes to improve the results from last year, when they missed the playoffs in the IBL.