Lehigh University product Rafe Perich was drafted by the World Champion Texas Rangers on Monday with the 225th pick, the last selection of the seventh round of the Major League Baseball draft.
Perich joins his father, Josh, as an MLB draft pick. The elder Perich was drafted by the Mets in the 11th round of the 1998 draft out of high school.
The younger Perich, a switch-hitter who went to Northwestern Lehigh High School, hit a team-high .382 as a junior this past season for the Mountain Hawks with 17 of his 52 hits going for extra bases. He walked 34 times, scored 32 runs and knocked in 41. He had a 1.064 OPS and .492 on-base percentage.
In three seasons at Lehigh, he has a .337 career batting average and .518 slugging percentage. He had 48 extra-base hits, including 15 home runs, and 102 RBIs. He has also pitched 11.1 innings and recorded 15 strikeouts.
Perich becomes the 19th Lehigh player to be selected in the MLB Draft, marking the fourth draft in the last six years featuring at least one Mountain Hawk (Levi Stoudt and Jason Reynolds in 2019, Mason Black and Matt Svanson in 2021, Adam Retzbach and Carlos Torres in 2022).
“Rafe is an amazing talent that is committed to putting in the work every day to improve his game,” said Lehigh coach Sean Leary. “He will represent Lehigh baseball and our university in an exemplary way.”
Playing third base when not pitching, the 6-foot-3, 215-pound Perich handled 93 chances with just three errors for a .969 percentage.
At Northwestern Lehigh, he led the Tigers to the Colonial League championship as a senior in 2021. In a 13-3 mercy-rule win over Notre Dame-Green Pond in the league championship game, he hit two mammoth homers and drove in four runs. He also earned the win with six strikeouts in four innings.
Although plagued by an injury that season, Perich earned all-area honors when he hit .418 as a senior with a 1.381 OPS. Of his 28 hits, 17 went for extra bases, including seven home runs. He knocked in 32 runs.
The 44-year-old Josh Perich, who later became an assistant coach at Northwestern and Lehigh, spent four seasons in the minors and five seasons in professional baseball overall.
Source: Berkshire mont