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A friend emailed me this
More than half a decade ago, when I covered the Royals for The Kansas City Star, I often got asked by readers: When is the team going to do something about Salvador Pérez’s contract?
The question stemmed from Pérez’s emergence as one of baseball’s best young catchers and from the inherent unfairness of the multi-year extension he struck after only 39 games in the majors. Pérez was an All-Star from 2013-15. He was due to make $2 million in 2016. His employers held team options on his next three seasons, and would only owe him $14.75 million for those years. When he collected the World Series MVP in 2015, an honor that came with a 2016 Chevy Camaro, the joke in the press box was that was the only way he could afford a new car.
“A lot of people were talking bad about me,” Pérez told The Athletic recently. “Like, ‘Why did you sign that?’ ‘You need some food?’”
Pérez inked the contract a few months before his 22nd birthday. My stance was that qualified him as an adult. Those millions were less than he deserved but they were guaranteed. Players didn’t give back cash when they hit poorly or walked the park. This is how it goes. The game was actually a business, I reasoned. The money Kansas City wasn’t spending on Pérez was money it could spend later on upcoming free agents such as Eric Hosmer and Lorenzo Cain. Paying Pérez more did not make the team better. So when fans asked when the team would re-work Pérez’s contract, I offered a version of the same answer: Why would the Royals do that?
Because, general manager Dayton Moore explained last month, “it was the right thing to do.” So just before 2016 started, Moore ripped up the deal and hammered out a five-year, $52.5 million extension with Pérez’s agent Rick Thurman. Pérez had hired Thurman and Beverly Hills Sports Council in 2014 to help him strike a new deal. Moore said he negotiated with owner David Glass as much as he did with Thurman. It did not make much business sense for the Royals to torpedo the team-friendly pact. But Moore believed it was not fair to Pérez.
So it should not come as a surprise to see the Royals splurge yet again on Pérez. The numbers were something of a stunner: $82 million across four seasons, the biggest guarantee in franchise history, all for a soon-to-be 31-year-old catcher who has undergone Tommy John surgery, knee surgery and bouts with concussions. But the impulse is the same as the one that undergirded Moore back in 2016. He was grateful for all Pérez had given to the organization. And he believed in his ability to stay productive. Moore had spent years wondering if Pérez’s enthusiasm for the game would ever slacken. He has yet to see it.
“Nobody loves to play baseball more than Salvador Pérez,” Moore said in a conference call Sunday afternoon. “There’s players that like to play it as much. But nobody loves to play more than Salvador Pérez. He gives us such great confidence in who he is, his work ethic and ability.”
Elbow reconstruction cost Pérez the 2019 season. He returned in 2020 to post a .986 OPS in 37 games. Moore trusts Pérez to shepherd the team’s incoming collection of young pitchers through the majors. As Moore pondered the evolution of prospects such as Brady Singer, Daniel Lynch and Asa Lacy, he projected Pérez guiding them behind the plate.
For years, Moore said, he had asked longtime advisor Chino Cadahia how the organization should handle the conclusion of Pérez’s contract. In January, a delegation of Royals officials, a group including Moore and owner John Sherman, met with Pérez in Florida to discuss “this potentiality,” Moore said. Moore described Sherman, who purchased the club from Glass for $1 billion in 2019, as “a big believer in Salvy.”
Sherman has earned plaudits for his early stewardship of the franchise. The Royals avoided layoffs during the 2020 season. (Moore and some of his lieutenants took pay cuts, as executives in many other organizations did.) The team took care of its minor-league players. In the winter, after missing the playoffs for a fifth consecutive year, Sherman authorized Moore to sign veteran slugger Carlos Santana and veteran pitcher Mike Minor.
“New ownership has been unbelievable,” bench coach Pedro Grifol said earlier this month. “They’ve been very supportive. We’ve got a nice ballclub, man. We’ve got a nice ballclub.”
The prognosticators may not agree. FanGraphs pegs the Royals for fourth place in the American League Central. So does Baseball Prospectus. The lineup may not be deep enough. The organization’s fleet of pitching prospects may not be ready. The addition of Minor and Santana may not alter the franchise’s immediate trajectory. Moore understood that. He still believed the team owed something to its fans after the recent spate of losing seasons.
“They are pieces that made us better,” Moore said in January.
Imagine that. Trying to get better. It is the sort of thing all fans want from their teams. It is the right thing to do.
The right thing to do. It’s a strange concept to consider these days in Major League Baseball. It is a time of framing craven behavior as efficient or business-savvy or some combination of the two. The sport is still reeling from a pandemic-ravaged season in which billionaire owners slashed salaries, furloughed some employees and laid off others, and threatened to withhold income from minor leaguers. Every offseason features teams trading away superstars as they approach free agency. Every spring invites a fresh debate about the manipulation of service time. Every summer offers a crash course in timidity as executives refuse to display aggression at the trade deadline.
The Royals are not immune from these forces. Moore would be the first to admit he is not infallible. The team has gone 143-241 since 2018. The front office may regret not flipping Whit Merrifield after the 2018 season, or Jorge Soler after 2019. In deciding to re-sign Alex Gordon, extend Pérez and dole out another $70 million to Ian Kennedy after 2015, the Royals gobbled up salary that could have been allocated for Cain and Hosmer.
Unlike 2016, though, the Royals do not have major contract decisions looming. Danny Duffy will be the team’s highest-paid player in 2021 at $15.5 million. His deal expires after this season. Outside of Pérez, Kansas City has $29 million in salary commitments for 2022 and $9.25 million for 2023. The pitching prospects — Singer, Lynch, Lacy, Jackson Kowar and Kris Bubic — are all years away from arbitration. The latest extension with Pérez should not hamper Sherman from spending in the future. Better the catcher gets above-market value than the money burns a hole in the pocket of the owner.
The Royals did not have to do this. Pérez’s body could break down. His offensive production in 2020 might be a short-season mirage. Folks in Kansas City may wonder why the team decided to do this. Moore will know why. He thought it was the right decision for his organization and for his organization’s most decorated player.
“We all know why everybody has believed in you all these years,” Moore told Pérez on Sunday over Zoom. “Because you’ve earned it. People love being around you. They pull for you. It’s special that we get a chance to keep you here.”
So often these things go the other way. We lament Boston shipping Mookie Betts to Los Angeles, Cleveland parting ways with Francisco Lindor, the Rockies engaging in a protracted feud with Nolan Arenado before paying him to play elsewhere. Pérez does not reside on the same plane as those players. The Royals may be paying him more than any other team might. They could have been more efficient. They could have been more ruthless. Then again, they could have just kept him on that first contract. Would that have been the right thing to do?
