Major League Baseball

Kansas City Royals' Salvador Perez earning his place among the best catchers in history

Published Aug. 26, 2021 9:11 a.m. ET

By Jordan Shusterman
FOX Sports MLB Writer

Catchers are ridiculous.

I mean this respectfully, but what kind of people would willingly subject themselves to the physical toll of squatting for three hours, multiple days in a row, during the summer, regularly wearing foul balls off every inch of their body ... while also being expected to hit major-league pitching?

Um, no thanks.

The offensive bar for big-league catchers is low for a reason. They have so much else to deal with mentally and physically that any amount of production at the plate is generally considered a bonus.

Enter Salvador Perez, who has caught more innings over the past 10 seasons than anyone not named Yadier Molina. Since his first All-Star season in 2013, the Royals' backstop has averaged 20-plus doubles, 20-plus homers and 70 RBIs each season, while winning five Gold Gloves along the way. That’s absurd!

Perez's career took an unexpected turn in 2019, when he suffered a torn UCL during spring training, which required Tommy John surgery. Position players get TJ, too, though it is certainly rare. Of the 140 major leaguers who have had Tommy John surgery the past five years, only nine were hitters, including Perez.

It was a shame that Salvy lost a full season of action in the middle of his prime, but since his return, he has somehow looked better than ever.

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Here are the players with a higher hard-hit rate (defined as the percent of balls put in play with an exit velocity of 95+ mph) than Perez's 54.9%:

Fernando Tatis Jr.
Shohei Ohtani
Aaron Judge
Giancarlo Stanton
Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Juan Soto

Perez is next on that list, and he’s a catcher! Catching all the time!!! He has caught more innings in 2021 than anyone except Christian Vazquez, and he has missed only one of Kansas City’s 126 games this year, having started 96 behind the plate and 28 at DH.

Catching that much is worthy of some sort of annual medal on its own, but also hitting 40-plus HR? We’re seeing something really special.

Only five catchers in MLB history have hit 40-plus homers in a season: Johnny Bench (twice), Mike Piazza (twice), Roy Campanella, Todd Hundley and, most recently, Javy Lopez in 2003. Gary Sanchez made a run at it recently, with 33 and 34 homers in 2017 and 2019, respectively.

At 33 homers with more than a month to go, Perez is in great position to join that exclusive club.

And that doesn't include the 28 home runs he hit in July at Coors Field, when he staged the best performance ever by a catcher in the Home Run Derby.

Also, if you thought elbow surgery would impact his ability to utilize his arm behind the plate, you’d be wrong: Perez's 40.6% caught-stealing rate is best among AL catchers, just as it was in 2012 and 2016.

Surgically repaired Salvy will still throw you out, so don’t even think about it.

Perez’s recent surge at the plate has also earned him some pretty special company historically. Only 13 catchers have had more extra-base hits than his 403 through their age-31 seasons. Nine of those are Hall of Famers, and the other four are nine-time All-Star Joe Torre (536), seven-time All-Star Brian McCann (486), eight-time All-Star Lance Parrish (474) and possible future Hall of Famer Joe Mauer (440).

Consider, too, that Perez has compiled all those extra-base hits while missing all of 2019 and playing only 37 games in a shortened 2020 — right during his prime. A full 2019 and 2020 could have given him another 90 extra-base hits, which would move him to seventh on the list, below some guy named Yogi Berra.

And by the way: Only two of the 13 — the two guys atop the list and arguably the best catchers ever, Johnny Bench and Ivan Rodriguez — have more Gold Gloves than Perez.

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The one obvious flaw in Perez’s offensive game is his complete disinterest in drawing walks. This is what has long dragged down his career OBP (.301) and, in turn, OPS (.759) to numbers that look markedly less impressive than those of Bench, Pudge or, more recently, Buster Posey.

Perez's sky-high slugging percentage has more than made up for it, but we’re talking about a truly historic avoidance of bases on balls. Since 1947, only five players with at least 4,000 plate appearances have drawn walks at a lower rate than Salvy’s 3.4% career mark.

On one hand, this is a somewhat problematic approach. Drawing walks at a lower rate than almost anyone in baseball history is likely, at times, unproductive. But I would also argue that this makes Salvy’s overall production all the more impressive. Any pitcher facing him knows that he has no interest in being patient.

That’s borne out not just in his low walk totals but in another metric as well. For his career, Salvy has swung at a whopping 44.6% of pitches he has seen out of the strike zone, unsurprisingly the highest mark in baseball over that time. Yes, it's even slightly higher than that of Javier Baez (44%)!

And yet, even with these epic levels of whatever the opposite of plate discipline is (plate recklessness?), Perez has maintained a perfectly reasonable 17.4% career strikeout rate and continued to mash the whole time. This is a truly special hitter.

But for all his on-field talents and achievements, what I love most about Salvador Perez is what he means to the Kansas City Royals. He has been a Royal for essentially half of his life on Earth. Yadier Molina (2000 draft), Joey Votto (2002 draft), Adam Wainwright (2003 trade), Kenley Jansen (signed in 2004), Ryan Zimmerman (2005 draft) and Clayton Kershaw (2006 draft) are the only active players who have been with one organization longer than Salvy, who signed with the Royals out of Venezuela as a 16-year-old on Oct. 10, 2006.

There were plenty of key contributors on those incredible 2014 and 2015 Royals teams, but Kansas City clearly picked the right one to keep around. In March 2016, fresh off the title, Perez signed a five-year extension to stay in K.C. through the 2021 season. Rather than test the market after this season, he re-upped for four additional years during 2021 spring training.

He’ll be a Royal through his age-35 season in 2025.

Still just 31 and at the top of his game, Perez is now primed to lead the next generation of Royals to contention — just as he did a decade ago. The Royals lost 90-plus games in each of his first two seasons in 2011 and 2012, but they were in the World Series two years later.

This year, the Royals are on the brink of a third consecutive 90-plus-loss season (excluding 2020). But if anyone knows what it takes to bounce back after losing seasons, it’s Perez — and it’s tremendously cool that he has stuck around long enough, and remained good enough, to be the face of a new wave of Royals baseball.

This team has real talent coming; the farm system was recently ranked third and fifth, respectively, by Baseball America and MLB Pipeline. Royals fans have to be ecstatic that Salvy will be there to guide the bevy of young pitchers while continuing to slug in the middle of the lineup.

And honestly, who better?

After all: He is the Kansas City Royals.

Jordan Shusterman is half of @CespedesBBQ and a baseball analyst for FOX Sports. He lives in D.C. but is a huge Seattle Mariners fan and loves watching the KBO, which means he doesn't get a lot of sleep. You can follow him on Twitter @j_shusterman_.