Think about how wrong this feels. Two years later, watch 16-year-old Salvador Perez crouch behind home plate in Miami blue in 2006. Salvador Perez put the word “everyday” into “everyday Kansas City Royals catcher” starting in 2012, launching pitches in the purple, thin mountain air of the Rockies. It’s enough to make you cry, but thankfully this dystopian future has been averted. The 35-year-old backstop has signed a two-year contract extension with the Royal Blues through the 2027 season, according to MLB.com’s Annie Rogers. This is better. The deal is worth $25 million, which includes some deferred payments and a $7 million signing bonus.
To be clear, Perez is not at risk of leaving anytime soon. His previous four-year, $82 million contract that started in 2022 included a $13.5 million option for 2026, and general manager JJ Picollo told reporters in September that the catcher would return in some form. Anthony Franco of MLB Trade Rumors explained the rationale for the deal: “While the exact salary structure and extensions have not yet been announced, it stands to reason that they make sense.” [the Royals will] Negotiate a lower ’26 salary than the option value while giving Perez a second guaranteed year. “So it’s a classic expansion trade-off. The Royals get a discount and Perez gets an extra year of job security. It also allows him to avoid becoming a free agent if any shenanigans happen when the collective bargaining agreement expires after the 2026 season.
This extra year is an important year in terms of increasing the likelihood of Perez retiring as a lifelong Royal. Someday in the not-too-distant future, we’re going to have a hard-fought battle over whether Perez deserves to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, and we’ll be lucky enough to live through that battle. At the same time, he improved his shooting ability in single-team battles. As for why the Royals would feel the need to move early and lock up an age-37 season for a catcher who has eclipsed 0.8 WAR only once in the past four years, well, it makes more sense than you might think.
Let’s start with reasons to be skeptical and end with reasons why this makes sense. In terms of sheer power, Perez is one of the greatest receivers of all time. He currently ranks eighth all-time among catchers with 303 career home runs, and he will likely jump to fifth in 2026. He only needs to hit 22 home runs to do that, and the last time he didn’t hit at least 20 homers in a season was 2014 (apart from 2020, when he went from 11 home runs to 26 over the course of the season). He hit 30 homers in 2025, his highest total since 2021, when he broke the single-season record for a catcher with 48. Can he hit 30 more home runs? Of course he can. He hit the ball as hard as ever. In fact, in May of this year, he just hit the hardest ball of his entire career and achieved his highest 90% exit velocity since 2021. But his overall offensive production is another story.
With this being one of the highest catch rates ever, Perez offset nearly all of that power with extremely low walk and on-base rates. Among the 717 players in our database with at least 6,000 career PAs, his 3.9% on-base percentage ranks 711th and his on-base percentage ranks 694th. As a result, he has a 103 career wRC+. The 2025 season provides a great example of a combination of his strengths and weaknesses. He posted a career-low BABIP and the third-highest xwOBA since Statcast began measuring the stat in 2015, with a 95 wRC+ on balance. Perez has posted at least a 100 DRC+ every season, including one dating back to 2017, but as one of the slowest and most impatient players in the game, he’s always been susceptible to BABIP errors. Steamer thinks he’ll post a 100 wRC+ next year, which presumably means he’ll be slightly lower than that next year. He could easily do anywhere from an 87 wRC+ in 2023 to 117 in 2024. However, be wary if the aging curve further reduces his contact rate. Things can get very bad very quickly.
Perez led baseball three times and eclipsed 100 games in six different seasons, but those were different times. He has caught just over 90 games in each of the past three seasons, spending the rest of his time at first base and designated hitter. His defense struggled initially at receiver and average. It goes without saying that any contending team should want bats that are above league average at both first base and DH, especially when much of that value is wasted due to some of the worst run value in the game. That’s all the bad stuff.
Now we end on a high note. Why do the Royals want Perez to stay with the team through the 2027 season? There’s all the legacy stuff here that we mentioned before. In fact, it’s hard to turn your nose up at a guy who has a good chance of hitting 30 home runs at Kauffman Stadium, no matter the defense, especially if your DH situation is inconsistent. Ultimately, we know Perez is a leader, a fan favorite and a Robert Clement Award winner who possesses the intangibles that have allowed the Royals to overlook mediocre WAR totals for years. All of these skills are relevant as Perez is starting to look like he could be the bridge to the next era of receivers in Kansas City.
The Royals traded backup catcher Freddie Fermin to San Diego at the deadline, and they did so at least in part because Carter Jansen was starting to make him look redundant. Jensen, the team’s third-round pick in 2021, is a local kid out of Park Hill High School in Kansas City. He posted a 130 wRC+ in 2024 between High-A and Double-A, then a 136 wRC+ in 2025 between Double-A and Triple-A. The Royals drafted him in September, and in 18 games he posted a 159 wRC+, thanks to monster exit velocity numbers he posted in a larger sample in Triple-A.
It seems safe to assume that Jensen will not continue to release data from Raleigh, Calif., next year. Steamer projects he will have a 104 wRC+. Additionally, when Eric Longenhagen ranked Janssen second in the organization behind Jac Caglianone in May, he wrote that the 22-year-old The age-old player still has a lot to figure out, both at the plate and behind the scenes: “Even as he trudges through the long developmental path of a high school catcher, physical conditioning is a reason to stay with Jansen.” But given his early success and the Fermin trade, the Royals are clearly ready to push Jansen down that path at a faster pace. It’s hard to imagine a better guide for the next two years than Perez. He was Kansas City’s final piece on the 2015 championship team and one of the most respected veterans in the game. His place in franchise history is already secure, and there’s no way of knowing how long he plans to catch the ball, but helping develop the next franchise receiver could be the cherry on top of his already stellar career.
