Salvy's back for two more years

It’s been a while, but October (if the Royals aren’t playing) is a great time to rest up and recharge after the grind of the regular season. Plus, the last month was a whirlwind for me personally.

It seems the best way to get back in the game and exercise that writing muscle is to rattle off a few notes. Lucky for us, the Royals have been busy since the end of the Series.

First up, the biggie: The Royals announced on Tuesday night that they agreed to a two-year contract with The Captain, Salvador Perez.

Perez was entering what would’ve been the final season of the largest contract in Royals history, a four-year, $82 million deal he signed in March of 2021. The upcoming 2026 season was a club option, valued at $13.5 million. Now, instead of that option, the Royals and Perez have a new deal that will cover both the 2026 and 2027 seasons. Anne Rogers reports that the total for the two years is $25 million that includes a $7 million signing bonus. There are also deferrals included. Contracts aren’t so straightforward these days. The number circulating among the interwebs is Perez is signed for a $12.5 million average annual value. I’m thinking that number may drop when the full terms are understood. My initial napkin math analysis is that it’s a fair deal for a club legend as he inches toward teh end of his career.

This was always going to be the outcome after this latest season. Perez is a Royal and the Royals are Perez. I don’t believe he will ever wear the uniform of another team.

Perez’s offensive production declined last year to a 95 wRC+, which was just the second time in the last six seasons that he performed worse than the league average hitter. That’s despite hitting 30 home runs for just the second time in his career and driving in 100 runs for the third time. It feels like a bit of a harbinger of the Hall of Fame debate that is sure to come in seven years or so. The advanced metrics just don’t understand the guy.

Perez will be 36 next May. The Statcast numbers behind his 2025 performance were solid as ever. Yet the power couldn’t cover the lack of on base production. Perez hit .236/.284/.446 in 2025. In the six seasons since Perez returned from Tommy John surgery, that represented his second-lowest slugging percentage and his worst on base percentage. It was a 30 home run, 100 RBI season that somehow was full of empty calories.

The question around the deal is how this impacts Perez’s playing time going forward. Last season, Perez appeared in 155 games and collected 641 plate appearances. Yet it would seem that newcomer Carter Jensen is ready to step into the primary catcher role. Vinnie Pasquantino has first base down. Jac Caglianone proved he could play right field. That probably means that Perez will collect most of his apperances as the designated hitter. It would serve both the Royals and Perez well if those games played and PA numbers took a significant step back in 2026.

The Royals can’t let Perez walk away. And Perez doesn’t want to walk. (Literally! Get it?) This feels like it could be the final contract of Perez’s career and it’s one that won’t hamper the Royals payroll. It can be difficult when a club legend is winding down his career, but both sides have structured a deal that seems to protect both player and team.

And now a familiar topic that seems to have no end in sight: The Royals stadium situation.

The Johnson County Post is reporting the Royals are sending out surveys to fans about three possible sites for their new stadium. Makes sense. After all, the previous stated goal we had heard about the Royals choosing a new location was they hoped to have something in place by June or July. So, given on how this whole fiasco has unfolded, it makes sense they send out a fan survey in…November.

After getting their collective asses handed to them in the April, 2024 election, I figured they would learn a little bit from that process, take some time to regroup and return with a solid plan. Friends, it’s been 19 months. There is no plan.

Simply incredible.

From The Post:

The team announced on Monday that fans would start receiving the survey via email and over the phone, which will cover a range of topics, including television broadcasts, the team in general and the “gameday experience.”

Fans who receive the survey will also be asked about three proposed locations for a new ballpark and associated development: Downtown/Near Downtown, Clay County/North Kansas City and Johnson County/Overland Park.

The Post goes on to say that specific locations are not mentioned, although as far as I know, the Johnson County location would be the Aspria Campus at 119th and Nall while the Downtown location would be Washington Square Park, just north of Crown Center between Main and Grand.

The Royals were quick to point out that, as mentioned by The Post above, that it covers a variety of topics. Of course the stadiums will be the focus because this issue was supposed to be settled long ago. I would be interested to see the questions asked about the television broadcast because I have some opinions.

If any of you fantastic subscribers have a copy of the questions asked in the survey, feel free to send them my way. The email is brown3829 at gmail dot com.

From the easy pickings on the stadium front to possibly the most impactful news of this offseason: The Royals have lost assistant pitching coach Zach Bove to the Chicago White Sox. Bove will move to the South Side to head up Sox pitching staff.

Bove, with pitching coach Brian Sweeney and bullpen coach Mitch Stetter, engineered a complete overhaul of how the Royals instruct their pitchers. He’s been called a “Swiss Army knife” for his approach that leans heavy on analytics with a solid does of biomechanics. The science behind this is insane, and the results are undeniable. Just look at how the Royals improved their team ERA once Bove and Sweeney got to work.

2022 - 4.72 ERA (27th)
2023 - 5.17 ERA (28th)
2024 - 3.76 ERA (7th)
2025 - 3.73 ERA (6th)

Yes, the pitching coaches were here in 2023, but you’ll recall that was a 100-loss season spent picking up the pieces of the wreckage left behind by manager Mike Matheny and pitching coach Cal Eldred. The last two seasons have been revelatory when it comes to how the Royals have developed and improved their pitching. Sure, it helped that the Royals added veteran talent in Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha, but it’s worth pointing out that both have had the best years of their career since coming to Kansas City. Then there was the breakout of Cole Ragans and, most recently, the ascendancy of Noah Cameron and Kris Bubic.

It’s not surprising that Bove was plucked for a larger role in another organization. It hurts even more that it was the White Sox. Now the Royals will need to fill the hole that has been created in their pitching lab.

Jon Heyman broke the news that the Royals placed pitcher Kyle Wright on outright waivers. Wright hasn’t pitched in the majors since undergoing shoulder surgery just over two years ago. The Royals acquired him for Jackson Kowar back in November of 2023, knowing he would not pitch at all in the ’24 season. The hope was that he would finish up his rehab sometime in 2025 and make his major league return. It seemed like a solid plan at the time, but it just didn’t work out.

Wright experienced shoulder fatigue in May, which short-circuited a minor league rehab assignment and then experienced an oblique injury which caused another setback. He ultimately pitched 13 innings in Triple-A and another 10 in Double-A while posting a 5.5 BB/9 and 8.2 SO/9 between the two stops. He finished with a 5.48 ERA.

It’s likely that Wright will clear waivers and land somewhere on a minor league deal. That could even be back in Kansas City.

Finally, I’d like to welcome a new Royals site to the blogosphere: Royals Keep. It’s a site run by the team that started the Twins Centric collective several years ago. It’s a wildly successful venture of local bloggers that has blossomed into several team sites.

Kevin O’Brien, who ran the Royals Reporter site, is one of the primary writers. It also appears that my pal Darin Watson is on the masthead as well. It’s always a good thing when a new site shows up and I wish them success. Go give the new guys a click.