The Kansas City Royals have made no bones about their feelings on catcher Salvador Perez’s roster status for next season.
General manager J.J. Picollo has said repeatedly that Perez will be on the team. It’s just a question of whether the 35-year-old’s club option for $13.5 million gets picked up, or if the Royals instead work out an extension beyond next season.
Still, as he continues aging, it’s reasonable to wonder whether Perez’s desires and the club’s willingness to put him in his preferred role will ever reach a point of contention.
As the Royals and Perez enter an offseason that could provide major hints about his long-term future with the club, principal owner John Sherman made one thing clear: He wants to see Perez remain in the same uniform for the rest of his career.
“I would love that,” Sherman said, per Anne Rogers of MLB.com. “That would be our goal, too. I think he’s a Hall of Famer. I know there’s different ways to look at that. But if you look at his longevity, what he did this year, now with the 300 home runs and 1,000 RBIs, that’s a pretty good body of work.”
Perez certainly isn’t a liability for the Royals yet. He just hit 30 home runs and drove in 100 RBIs this season, and his hard-hit metrics actually suggest he should have had much better numbers than his .729 OPS would indicate.
But Kansas City has a wealth of young catching talent, led by rookie Carter Jensen, and Perez had -15 blocks above average this season, putting him in the second percentile among all catchers despite only playing 92 games behind the plate.
Perez means much more to the Royals than his production on either side of the ball. He’s the captain of the team and the last remaining player from the World Series-winning roster in 2015. And as long as both sides are committed to keeping the partnership alive, there should be a way to make it happen.
We’ll all have to wait and see how this winter plays out, but in the midst of a potentially awkward contract situation, all parties have thus far given nothing but positive indications.
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