Home Run Royalty! Salvy stands alone

Well that didn’t take long.

Just a few days after tying the Royals franchise record for home runs, Salvador Perez went deep in the seventh inning at Comerica Park on Saturday afternoon. The blast both tied the game and broke the tie with George Brett atop the Royals franchise home run leaderboard.

It was his fourth home run in the nine games since the All-Star Break, so he’s still riding that power surge. It was career home run 318. The record-breaker was a no-doubt number, traveling 401 feet before landing in the bleachers.

The pitch was an 0-1 hanging slider from reliever Kyle Finnegan, the kind of pitch Perez has made numerous meals out of throughout his career. He just yanks his hands closer to his body and does his thing. Salvy hasn’t been handling the sliders well at all this year, hitting just .153 against the pitch with a .186 slugging percentage. The sinker—the pitch he hit the record-tying home run off of last Wednesday—is very much his favored offering this year. Maybe that’s another sign of him being locked in, shaking off the first three-plus months of the season. As I wrote after he tied the record, it seems sort of insane to give up on Salvador Perez. Why would you?

(I know what you’re thinking about Salvy and sliders because we’ve all watched him chase sliders down and away for 16 years, but Perez has generally been fine against that pitch…when he puts it in play.)

It was Perez’s 15th home run on the season, second-most on the team this year, behind only Jac Caglianone who has bashed 16. It was, as mentioned, Perez’s 318th home run of his career. He now sits alone on the Royals all-time home run leaderboard. Your current top five:

Salvador Perez - 318
George Brett - 317
Mike Sweeney - 197
Amos Otis - 193
Alex Gordon - 190

The home run was great and all, but the Royals needed to find a way to scratch another run across the plate. To that point in the game, the Royals had managed just five hits and had gone 1-10 with runners in scoring position. The Tigers were providing opportunities but the Royals bats were too tepid to capitalize. We have seen this ballgame myriad times this summer.

In the ninth inning, the guy who has come up with just about every big hit (non-Salvy home run division) since the All-Star Break, Nick Loftin, broke the tie. Perhaps as his own tribute to Perez, Loftin turned on an inside four-seamer and roped it over the fence in left. On an 0-2 pitch, too! It gave the Royals a late 3-2 lead that they would hold onto in a nervy (of course!) bottom of the ninth.

Prior to Saturday, the Royals and the Tigers had met five times at Comerica. All five games had been decided by one run. All five Royals losses. About time the Royals turned the tables.

It's couldn't have come on a better day.

On another afternoon where the Royals offense was spare, the ever-dependable Michael Wacha spun another quality start. He wasn’t exactly dominant, but went seven innings, allowing just two runs while striking out just three. He surrendered back-to-back doubles in the second and allowed a solo home run in the fourth. In both instances the damage was done by Tigers rookie Hao-Yu Lee.

Wacha managed just one swing and miss against his changeup on 18 total swings. Even that was a foul tip. He normally works more arm-side with the change that where he was finishing on Saturday, with an emphasis at both the top and bottom of that edge. Against the Tigers, he was living more in the middle with his change. These are all the swings the Tigers took against that pitch.

It looks as though Wacha was fortunate that the Tigers weren’t able to do more damage to the change. The one that is above the zone that went for a run was the Lee home run.

After Wacha, relievers Daniel Lynch IV and Alex Lange finished off the Tigers by posting two scoreless innings. Nothing is ever certain with this bullpen, even with Lynch as the most dependable reliever. He did get through a clean eighth. After Loftin powered the Royals to the lead in the top of the ninth, Matt Quatraro dispatched Lynch again to face left-handed hitting Riley Green to open the bottom half of the frame. I cannot argue against that move as Green was at a severe platoon disadvantage. Against lefties this year, Greene is hitting .222/.345/.342. Of course Greene singled. Nothing about the Royals bullpen is easy in 2026.

That brought in Lange, the former Tiger, to close the game. A baseball homecoming of sorts as Lange saved 29 games for Detroit in his career, with 26 of them coming in 2023. While he got the pesky Lee to go down swinging, he allowed a single to Zach McKinstry that had Greene motoring to third. With runners on the corners and one out, Matt Vierling squared to bunt. As we’ve seen ourselves, that can be a good idea. If the hitter can get the bunt down. Vierling, though, fouled off his first attempt and then pulled back and looked at a strike on his second. The last thing he wanted to do was go down 0-2 without swinging the bat. Lange finished him off two pitches later with a sinker.

That took a ton of pressure off but Lange still needed to get pinch hitter Spencer Torkelson. The slugger was first pitch swinging and got under an elevated sinker for a pop out. Ballgame. Party time.

As we know from Wednesday's game where Perez tied the franchise home run record, celebrations of personal achievements go much better when the team wins. Thank goodness they pulled this one out.

This was the scene after the game when Salvy was getting ready for another post-game confab with Joel Goldberg.

I'm sorry...how damn cool is that? To have everybody on the field to celebrate with The Captain wasn't something I expected and was just a special moment. We know Salvy respects the game. We know he grinds and battles to get onto the field. We know the guy works to be ready and we know they're going to have to peel off the catcher's gear when his career is over. It's the Salvy Way. And now we know how much his teammates respect that.

We've always known, of course, that Salvy's teammates love him. But we don't get to see this kind of emotion and support. Especially this year which has been such a grind from the very early days. I dunno...Seeing the excitement of Carter Jensen...seeing Vinnie Pasquantino wave Perez's pal, coach Miguel Garcia, onto the field to greet him before he hit the dugout...Hell, have you seen how Tyler Tolbert just looks at Perez? It's pretty clear Tolbert is thrilled just to be near the guy. Very strong "my big brother is the coolest" vibes. I don't blame him one bit.

Speaking of Miguel Garcia, how cool was this moment?

Garcia has been with the Royals for 21 seasons. He's in his fourth season as a major league coach after spending 13 years as the Royals primary batting practice pitcher. He threw to Salvy in the Home Run Derby in 2021 and is Perez's best friend on the team. I don't know how this went down, if it was planned or not, but I do know that Pasquantino waved for him to get on the field. A truly nice moment in an afternoon filled with them.

And after the obligatory Salvy Splash and after Salvy gave Goldberg a hard time for asking too many post-game questions ("They wanna go eat!") the boys still had time to gather for a team photo.

The 2026 season is a lost cause. The Royals, for some reason, seem to be hedging about how much they'll hold on to at the trade deadline. We are also not guaranteed a full 2027 season due to the expiring collective bargaining agreement. Maybe all that is why I was so struck by everything that happened for Perez on Saturday. Sometimes, reality falls short of expectations. Nothing is guaranteed. That's why it is so important to celebrate these moments. It's a team game but the team is the sum of the individuals. Individual achievements matter. Especially an achievement such as the all-time franchise leader in home runs.

Yet Perez isn't a Royal and doesn't hit this home run if he isn't a team player. We've heard him say "Kansas City is my second home" a number of times this week. He's the face of this franchise and one of the icons of this city because he's not only been an individual star, he's been a great teammate. It's been this way for a long time: Salvy is the Royals. The Royals are Salvy.

Congrats to Salvy on hitting number 318. And congrats to the Royals for recognizing and embracing the importance of the moment.