After a 2011 rookie season that saw him bat .331/.361/.471 over 158 PA and produce 1.5 WAR in only 39 games, Salvador Perez signed a 5 year / 7 million dollar contract with the Kansas City Royals. The deal also included 3 years of club options that could push the base value to 23.8 million dollars over 8 years, with potentially $800,000 more in All-Star and Gold Glove bonuses.

The Royals viewed this as a sly measure of good faith. They offered 7 million guaranteed dollars to a young man with only 39 games of MLB experience. Most media considered it a steal, a borderline criminal abuse of an organization taking advantage of a young man from meager means who didn’t know any better. Salvy was trending towards stardom. 23.8 mil over 8 was a laughable sum, even more so 5 mil over 7.

Hindsight is proving the pundits correct. Across the World Wide Web, you’ll find that people project 1 WAR is worth 7-9 million dollars. Over the first 4 years of the deal, Salvy has produced 8.9 WAR and been paid a total of 7.3 million dollars. That’s a little over $820,000 per WAR. That’s extremely good.

Going by those projections, the Royals *should* have paid him between 58.1 and 74.7 million dollars. I think everyone in the universe would have been calling for Moore’s head had he signed Salvy to a 4 year/60 mil deal before the 2012 season.

A general glaze over basic stats shows Salvy has been overall productive at the plate, averaging .278/.305/.433 with 16 HR and 65 RBI over the past 4 years. The HR and RBI numbers would be even higher had he not missed over half of 2012 due to injury.

Furthermore, other than that specific injury, he has been (frustratingly at times) an iron man behind the dish, averaging 143 games the past 3 seasons. He also has one of the most iconic clutch base hits in Royals history. Simply put, he has GREATLY outperformed this contract.

Perez is also the kind of player a marketing department dreams about. He has a HUGE personality, the ever-smiling face of the “band of brothers”. He’s not the best hitter of the bunch, but he is the unquestioned leader of the “fun at the old ballpark” shenanigans we’ve come to expect. He is everything that is right about Kansas City Royals baseball. The local Gatorade sales reps dread the day he moves on.

Why is there even a question here? Of course, lock him up! 20 year deal. Give him all the monies.

The economics of baseball just don’t work like that. There is an ever quickly approaching close to the window for this particular Royals team. The core will soon be hitting free agency. Even with the recent success and a new television deal looming on the horizon, the Royals will never be able to consistently play the free agency game.

Dayton Moore has to remain cognizant that as much as he would like to reward Salvador Perez for what he has done (not to mention all the good PR that would result from that), he must try to project what kind of player he will be in 2020 and beyond.

Before we go any further, let me make one thing abundantly clear: I absolutely adore Salvador Perez. Like most Royals fans, I put him on a “one of the best catchers in baseball” pedestal that the numbers don’t *necessarily* support. Like many players on this particular team, I would love to see him in royal blue for many, many years to come.

BUT …

This article is called Number Munchers. Let’s see if we can find some stats that might help us gaze in the glass ball of MLB future.

What we find is a dirty little secret that irrational fandom overlooks. Advanced metrics show Salvy to be a declining player at the plate. I won’t get super deep into fancy-schmancy analytics, but here are a few that begin to paint a picture:

1) His OBP% has fallen consistently every year since his rookie campaign. From 2011-2013, he averaged a .459 SLG. From 2014-2015 (and this even includes his career high 21 HR in 2015), he averaged .415 SLG.

2) His BB% and K% were career worsts in 2015. He’s never been one to take a lot of walks or strike out very much. But since 2013, both figures have moved further in their respective worse directions (2.4% BB and 14.8% K).

So what? This team is not built around OBP or power. We don’t take walks, we don’t strikeout. We are built around putting the ball in play. Show me some contact stuff, foolish sports blogger!

3) Salvy’s Hard Contact % in 2015 was the lowest of the past 4 years (24%). Yet at the same time, he saw his second highest career % of Fastballs and the % of Sliders and Curveballs were below what he saw in 2014. Simply put, he saw more fastballs/cutters/sinkers and less breaking stuff (with the exception of Change Ups, which were up slightly .8%). Yet his Hard Contact % actually went down.

4) His Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP) was the lowest of his career (.270). This is coming off of 2014, where he had his previous career lowest mark of .278. To be fair, LOTS of things factor into BABIP and this is a somewhat dangerous stat to misinterpret. But from 2012-2013, he had a .305 BABIP. From 2014-2015, that fell to .274. Long term trends are what make the hay with this stat. Salvy is long-term trending in a bad direction.

5) Salvy has progressively become a more “boom or bust” batter. His saving grace has been an increase in HR each year (3 – 11 – 13 – 17 – 21). Somewhat puzzling, as noted earlier, he has also seen his SLG decrease (.473 – .471 – .433 – .403 – .426). One explanation for this could be as he has gotten older and stronger, the balls he is squaring up are leaving the yard where they may have only been doubles before. When he squares up a ball, he is smoking it further than earlier in his career. However, overall he is squaring up the ball considerably less often.

Why the offensive decline? Is he losing bat speed due to wearing down? Is he struggling to counter the adjustments pitchers have made against him? In reality, it is probably a fair share of column A and B. And probably quite a bit of columns C, D, E, F, etc. that we didn’t even touch on.

So what to do? Once again, he has GREATLY outperformed his current contract to this point. Even further, if the Royals pick up the 3 option years, Perez would be in line for 16.75 million over the next 4 years. This is still an INCREDIDLE steal for the Royals. Hell, double that and it still vastly works out in the Royals favor, even with the noted warning signs listed above. Give him a raise? Sure. He deserves to be making more money right now.

But about that extension …

At that point, 30 year old Salvy will have knees that have played over 1,000 MLB games behind the dish. Yadier Molina has proven able to continue catching a high level at that point. Jason Kendall put together a couple good years in his early 30s. Carlton Fisk had some of the best years of his career in his 30s. Gary Carter as well. But it is probably safe to say they are the exceptions to the rule.

Perez is also listed at 6’4”, 240 pounds. That is a BIG body to put that much wear and tear upon. Especially for 143 games a season.

Perhaps the long term solution would be to transition to 1B/DH once his body gets to the point he can’t catch every day. If that is the case, we DEFINITELY need to see marked improvement with the bat. A line of .278/.305/.433 with 16 HR and 65 RBI is fine as a catcher (especially one with Salvy’s defensive prowess), but much less so at 1B/DH.

In the end, there are just too many questions. Whereas the fan in me would welcome an extension for the big old loveable guy, the dork-looking-up-sabermetrics doesn’t think it makes sense. If he can show a rebound at the plate in 2016, perhaps a reasonable extension can be explored.

In this case, one year really could make all the difference.

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