Royals, Salvador Perez agree to contract extension
A new contract demands a special newsletter dispatch!
Record-setting. On Sunday the Royals announced they reached a contract extension with catcher Salvador Perez for four years at $82 million. It’s the largest contract in franchise history.
Perez was entering the final year of his previous extension, signed ahead of the 2017 season. He’s due to make $13 million this year, with the remainder of a pro-rated signing bonus thrown on top. The total due is $14.2 million according to Cot’s Contracts. It’s the third extension Perez has signed with general manager Dayton Moore and the Royals. And it’s another example of new ownership putting forward the cash to keep the best players around.
The extension kicks in after this year. Here are some quick thoughts about a record-setting contract for a franchise player.
On the surface, this is an overpay
Alec Lewis from The Athletic has the contract details.
As previously noted this is the largest contact in Royals’ history, surpassing the free-agent deal Alex Gordon signed coming off the 2015 season. It kicks in next year, meaning it will pay Perez through his age 32 through 35 seasons, with a strong possibility that the club option gets picked up in ’26…because it’s the Royals and because it’s Salvador Perez.
An extension like this for a catcher at this stage in his career usually isn’t a good idea. Teams generally shy away from paying catchers over the age of 30 major coin. When looking for comparisons, Yadier Molina signed a five-year, $75 million extension before his age 29 season. His next extension was a three-year, $60 million deal inked at the start of his age 34 season. Other backstops such as Joe Mauer and Buster Posey were in their 20s when they signed their respective eight-year extensions. The Mauer extension, signed in 2008 had an AAV of $23 million, a record that stood until this winter when J.T. Realmuto passed it…with a $23.1 AAV. Teams just aren’t interested in paying huge amounts of money to catchers.
This extends to the free-agent market. We’re coming off a winter where only two catchers scored a deal longer than two years. The aforementioned Realmuto and James McCann. It was the first off-season since 2001 that two catchers signed for four years or more in free agency.
In a study at Fangraphs a few years ago, Dave Cameron, using data provided from Jeff Zimmerman, illustrated that catcher aging curves, while accelerated from other position players, follow a similar arc. At least offensively speaking.
The takeaway is this goes against conventional wisdom that follows that catchers are more likely than any other position player to break down earlier in their careers. While the study is several years old, I suspect the actual alignment of the curves has remained in a similar balance. Obviously, the Mauer and Posey extensions mentioned above serve as warnings and those were considered safer deals at the time.
But it’s not just about performance on the field for the Royals
The Royals clearly put an emphasis on a positive clubhouse culture and have always valued Perez’s leadership, both with the pitchers and in the clubhouse overall. He is, perhaps, the happiest baseball player. Even when Perez wasn’t playing in 2019, the Royals felt he brought value when he was around the team. To be in the presence of Perez is to feel the energy he brings to everything he does.
Perez is also the face of the franchise. The term can make me cringe (mainly the way MLB has used it in a ham-fisted marketing attempt the last few years), but in this case, it’s absolutely true. Ask 100 casual fans on either coast to name one Royal player and I would bet 95 would throw Perez out as their first choice. And they wouldn’t have to think about it all that long. In Kansas City, that means he’s achieved icon status. He is as beloved a ballplayer that I can remember. He’s not as good as George Brett or even a Frank White, but he (along with the recently retired Alex Gordon) is up there. Notice something about those names? All three spent their entire career with the Royals. Perez is poised to do the same.
The Royals have recently been cautious about their long-term deals, providing some wiggle room on the back, so it’s a bit of a surprise that Perez’s new deal increases in value from ’22 to ’23 and again in 2025. While catcher aging curves may not diverge all that much from other position players, we can expect a decline in production, especially as we near the end of the contract. The Royals don’t appear to be taking that into consideration here.
However, this extension can also be viewed through the prism of Perez’s earlier extensions, particularly the one he signed after making his major league debut in 2011. That was a contract that had the potential for the club to buy out his first two years of free agency at a total of $26.75 million over what could’ve been eight years. That would have been a $3.34 million AAV. That was heavily skewed to the team’s favor.
The Royals and Perez tore up that deal before the 2016 season (after winning the World Series MVP award) with a contract that was more in line with fair market value. But in the end, the Royals were able to keep his arbitration years under very friendly club control. This new extension, in some ways, can be viewed as a make-good for those years.
That’s something a team can do with a franchise icon.
The Hall of Fame question
I keep returning to Molina as a comp for Perez. And I’m not the only one. It’s that the similarities to this point are inescapable to the production both on and off the field.
After coming up at age 21, Molina was a below-average hitter his first and a half seasons. He experienced an offensive breakout at age 28 in 2011 and remained mostly above average for the next eight seasons. I’m not sure about his HoF credentials at this point, but I do know there is a case to be made in his favor. Currently, he’s ranked at 24 on Jay Jaffe’s JAWS for catchers, just behind Jason Kendall, Darrell Porter and Jim Sundberg but ahead of Lance Parrish.
Perez likewise debuted at 21. He found more immediate offensive success than Molina, but soon settled into a mostly below-average groove with the bat. It took eight and a half seasons (not counting his lost 2019) for Perez to really break out with the bat. The question is, can he continue to keep his production above average? Clearly, the Royals are banking on this.
Perez is not a Hall of Famer...but he still has plenty of career left. It will be interesting to see how he progresses. And the Royals seem to have made a wager that if he does get enshrined, he will have spent his entire career in Kansas City just like the franchise’s only other member of the Hall. It’s a long way away, but it’s something that will start to come up from time to time the more Perez plays. It’s worth watching.
Catching is the most demanding position on the field. While the aging curve may mirror position players, there’s a reason so many move off of the position as they get older. But Perez, despite different injuries has shown no inclination to move, nor have the Royals looked like they’re searching for other alternatives.
Let’s talk about defense
Perez has a helluva arm behind the plate, throwing out 35 percent of would-be base stealers in his career. (For perspective Molina has gunned down 40 percent.) But catching defense and how we measure it has evolved quite a bit since Perez broke into the big leagues.
Perez has never graded out well as a pitch framer. In 2018, his last full season in the majors, he finished at -9.9 Called Strikes Above Average Runs, which ranked him 116th out of 122 catchers. The year before that, he was at -10.
But something changed for Perez in 2020. Maybe it was the year away from the punishment of catching. Maybe it was all the work he was putting in during his rehab from Tommy John. Whatever it was, Perez was a new man behind the plate, finishing at 1.6 CSAA Runs, the best mark of his career and good for 18th place among catchers. Was that the function of a small sample of a Covid season of baseball? Or was there something more at play? We’ll learn more going forward, but like with the offensive breakout, the Royals are buying that the defensive Perez we saw in 2020 will be that player going forward.
A few final thoughts
Finally, the Royals with new owner John Sherman, have come to play. Sherman knows what this franchise means to Kansas City and he knows what Perez means to this franchise. He’s making sure the icon sticks around and probably finishes his career as a Royal.
And as he’s shown a willingness to spend this off-season, and with the new TV contract kicking in and the general cash to be made once the restrictions are lifted from this pandemic, the team is well-positioned to be making money. While a Perez contract extension is record-setting for the team, they are by no means tapped out or hamstrung by this deal. The free agents signed this winter will be off the books by 2023 and the prospects moving through the system will be at various stages of arbitration eligibility.
The Royals are building something and Perez continues to be a part of that.
Besides, with the relationship between Perez and Moore and Sherman, it’s not unthinkable that if the need arises, another extension could someday be in the cards that could help the team down the road.