Veteran catcher Salvador Perez is the face of the Royals franchise, the last man standing from the club’s 2015 World Series team, and a nine-time All-Star with five Gold Gloves and five Silver Sluggers to his name. He’s one of the most important players in the organization’s history, and in that sense the 35-year-old’s legacy is already secure. That impenetrable legacy does little to help the Royals’ playoff odds in 2025, however, and in that regard Perez’s performance this year has been lacking. He’s hit just .218/.254/.324 across 46 games and 190 plate appearances so far in 2025. That leaves him with a wRC+ of just 57 and negative WAR according to both Baseball Reference and Fangraphs, and that’s in spite of a brief hot streak where he collected 14 hits (including eight doubles) in ten games from April 24 to May 6.
That sort of production just won’t cut it for a Royals club that has playoff aspirations. Their 27-22 record entering play today is enough to keep them in the thick of the Wild Card race, but the recent losses of both Seth Lugo and Cole Ragans from the front of their rotation will put more pressure than ever on the offense to score runs. Perez is typically a key part of that offense, and with other key cogs in the lineup like Vinnie Pasquantino and Jonathan India also struggling to produce early in the year, Perez remains as important as ever. Can he turn things around, or do the Royals have a tough decision to make this summer about a franchise legend’s playing time in a pennant race?
A look at the underlying metrics provides plenty of reason for optimism. The most glaring factor in Perez’s downturn in performance is his anemic .106 ISO, which would put him on par with the 2024 performances of light-hitting, contact-oriented bats like Nico Hoerner and Nolan Schanuel. That’s a worrisome comparison to make considering Perez averaged 30 homers per season from 2021 to 2024, but the good news is that all signs point to this power outage coming to an end sooner rather than later. Despite hitting just two home runs so far this year, Perez’s 13.0% barrel rate is actually his best since he smacked 48 bombs in 2021 and his 45.7% hard-hit rate is better than it was in either of the past two seasons. In fact, Perez’s barrel and hard-hit rates are almost identical to those of Pete Alonso this year.
That could make it easy to write off Perez’s lackluster performance so far this season as little more than a fluke that should correct itself in due time, and the Royals are surely hoping that’s the case. With that being said, there are at least some potential red flags in the veteran’s performance that are worth keeping an eye on. While Perez has never been a particularly well-disciplined hitter, his 22.6% strikeout rate and 4.2% walk rate are both trending in the wrong direction relative to his All-Star 2024 season. He’s also hitting slightly more balls on the ground with fewer line drives relative to last year. All four of those figures are well within the bounds of Perez’s career norms, however.
Perhaps the biggest reason for concern regarding Perez is his age. As a 35-year-old catcher, it would hardly be a surprise if he wasn’t as physically capable of maintaining peak performance across 162 games as he was in his younger days. Regular reps at first base and DH should help that somewhat, but it’s still worth noting that Perez has seen his offense take a turn for the worse when the calendar flips to July in each of the past two seasons. If that trend of Perez slowing down as the year progresses continues in 2025, he may be running out of time to turn his overall season numbers around despite the solid underlying metrics to this point in the year.
How do MLBTR readers think the rest of Perez’s 2025 campaign will play out? Will he bounce back to around where he’s been in recent years, as the underlying numbers suggest? Or has he struggled too deeply for too long in the first half to make up for a potential slowdown after the All-Star break? Have your say in the poll below:
