This story was excerpted from Christina De Nicola’s Marlins Beat newsletter, which was written this week by Paige Leckie. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

It's not too often that someone makes superstar two-way player Shohei Ohtani look small. After all, Ohtani is 6-foot-4 and 210 pounds.

But last year, when Marlins top prospect Eury Pérez made the National League Futures team and flew to Los Angeles with his mentor, future teammate and All-Star Sandy Alcantara, he got quite a special opportunity.

The 6-foot-8 Pérez got to meet Ohtani, a moment frozen in time on Pérez’s Instagram.

“He's my best friend," Pérez joked on Saturday in Spanish via translator Luis Dorante Jr. "That was during the All-Star Game, we're with the same agency and there was a party our agency put together.

"When he arrived, I saw him and I said, 'I really admire him, he's such an amazing talent.' And I took the picture thinking that it was going to take me a lot of time to meet him again, but now I'm starting tomorrow.”

Then just 19 years old, Pérez simply took in the moment, letting the enormity of it wash over him. When asked what meeting the superstar was like, Pérez’s answer was simple.

“He’s like a kid,” Pérez said. “He's very humble, and the way he acts -- he's always joking around. He has a translator that I got the opportunity to communicate with Shohei. He was joking with me, telling me how tall I am. And that I need to continue working really hard -- if I do my best, hopefully he'll see me in The Show sometime soon.”

Perhaps that happened sooner than either Ohtani or Pérez expected.

It took Pérez less than a year from taking that photo to facing Ohtani on a Major League field. He battled the Angels in his fourth Major League start on Sunday, facing off with both Mike Trout and Ohtani.

“I grew up watching these amazing talents, like Trout and of course Ohtani as well," Pérez said Saturday ahead of his Sunday start. "But it's gonna be an exciting moment for me, I'm just gonna go out there, try to compete as much as I can. I know they're gonna do the same. Just enjoy the moment is pretty much just what I want to do.”

Compete is exactly what Pérez did. With two outs in the first inning, Pérez got behind 3-0 to Ohtani. Then, he did what he does best: leveraging his 100 mph four-seam fastball with a low-80s curve. Four pitches later, Ohtani was returning to the Angels’ dugout after whiffing and Pérez was through one hitless inning, having struck out one of baseball’s premier players.

Pérez also struck out Trout swinging, this time pulling ahead 0-2 before conceding a ball, then got the slugger to whiff to end the third inning. Pérez hurled five scoreless innings to help snag a 2-0 win, his second big league dub.

“He got some big outs in big moments against some really great hitters,” manager Skip Schumaker said postgame. “Getting Trout and Ohtani out are probably the highlights of his early career.”