Salvador Perez’s Disturbing Trends
It was another productive season from Salvador Perez, at least from a fantasy baseball perspective. He earned the fifth most value among catchers and set a new career high in plate appearances and homers. But all is not well.
Since his debut, Perez was a high contact guy, and as a catcher, was one of the rare batting average contributors, which made him a valuable fantasy baseball commodity. But this season he hit just .260, and it wasn’t entirely due to a career low .278 BABIP. Another part of the explanation is his declining ability to make contact. Check out these trends:
Now of course a 14% K% and 7.8% SwStk% remain good and better than the league average. But without great power at the moment, this was Perez’s best skill, and it’s deteriorating. Perhaps even more disturbing is his penchant to swing and keep swinging. And he swings at everything — check out that O-Swing%!
Perez has always swung at more pitches than the average Major Leaguer, as well as more pitches outside the strike zone. But he’s taken that proclivity to an entirely new level this year. He ranked seventh in baseball in Swing% and second in O-Swing%. This hasn’t been so problematic in the past, but it has become so.
So he’s swinging at more pitches, and those pitches are generally balls outside the strike zone. Considering Perez also never walks, there’s literally no incentive whatsoever for pitchers to throw him strikes. And since he’s having more difficulty making contact with those pitches, it’s even more beneficial for pitchers to just quit throwing him strikes.
Vladimir Guerrero was the poster child for this approach, swinging at everything, including pitches outside the zone. And his O-Contact% was significantly lower than Perez’s. But the difference is that Guerrero was willing to take a walk. He posted an 8.1% career walk rate and typically posted marks in the high single digits and low double digits during his prime. On the other hand, Perez has yet to post a walk rate above the 4.4% mark he posted during his debut in 2011.
Aside from the questionable plate discipline, he has also suddenly come down with a pop-up problem. He actually led all of baseball in IFFB%, which tells you right there why his BABIP sat at a career low. Essentially, nothing was really right with Perez’s approach at the plate this year.
Perez is a rather large man and he therefore looks like a guy who could enjoy a true power breakout in the near future. But his batted ball distance has declined in the last two seasons and his home run spike was due entirely to a surge in fly ball rate (and at-bats of course), rather than any sort of increase in HR/FB rate (which actually declined slightly). While hitters do alter their batted ball distributions, it’s not a common occurrence and the percentage play is to expect some regression in his fly ball rate toward the low 30% range he had done in prior years. So if we assume his home run total declines and we’re not sure his batting average will rebound, what are we left with? A catcher who is highly unlikely to earn the fifth highest fantasy value again in 2015.
Mike Podhorzer is the founder of ProjectingX IQ, an advanced fantasy baseball analytics platform that transforms projection data and in-season performance signals into actionable intelligence. He is the 2015 Fantasy Sports Writers Association Baseball Writer of the Year and three-time Tout Wars champion. He is the author of the eBook Projecting X 2.0: How to Forecast Baseball Player Performance, which teaches you how to project players yourself. Follow Mike on X@MikePodhorzer and contact him via email.
Maybe Perez wore down as the year went on? His first-half stats were much more palatable. But he has real-life value behind the plate, so Kansas City may keep running him out there 140+ times a year even if his hitting suffers.
“But the difference is that Guerrero was willing to take a walk.”
I think it is the pitcher who is more willing to walk Guerrero than Perez, to be honest.
Maybe the 144 games played as a catcher over the last two years has something to do with it? How does that not go mentioned? If the Royals had a half-way decent back up or didn’t abuse him, maybe Perez would have a better approach at the plate.
Not directly related to his performance, but worth mentioning (and there really is very little written about it on the internet) is that Salvador Perez is playing under the worst contract in baseball (5y/7m) thanks in part (it seems) to an agent who messed up bad and was subsequently dropped by Perez and became a defendant on charges of fraud and breach of contract.
It would be a classy thing for the KCR to renegotiate Perez’ contract. He is a warrior, a good catcher, a solid bat, and an emotional leader for this team.
Because I dont like to speculate when we don’t know the answer and can’t determine it. Sure he may have tired, and any number of other things could have provided an explanation. But we don’t know, so I avoid playing the guessing game.
I don’t know anything about Perez’s former agent being up on charges, but I do know that he tried to talk Perez out of signing that contract… so no, he didn’t “mess up bad.”
Perez, for his part, says that signing was a no brainer and that he has no regrets.
The agent in question is NOT “on charges” in any criminal sense. He and a fellow former associate of a larger agency concern, an American company based in L.A., are sued in a civil lawsuit by that company for essentially taking away it’s entire baseball ‘division’ on leaving, without permission or proper compensation. More narrowly & essentially, the company cannot, & is not, seeking any order that would put the agents under threat of jail; instead, for an accounting & ‘disgorging’ to the company of profits related to an alleged investment the company made in housing the two agents.
This is quite a common sort of lawsuit that often gets filed when associates leaving a larger concern take with them the clients ‘developed’ while at the larger concern. It’s not strictly necessary (at least not in most jurisdictions) for the side filing the lawsuit to allege what we peons think of as serious indictable crimes like conspiracy, embezzlement, fraud & theft; but, besides that there are a few jurisdictions that require that those sorts of allegation be made for a breach-of-fiduciary-duties & disgorging-of-profits type civil lawsuit, there are clients who insist on them & their are lawyers who urge their clients to allege them, simply for the revenge or strategic value. This is particularly so when the defending side has some sort of latent or superficial p.r. problem (like foreign nationality; you see a lot of this in cases involving Middle East & South American defendants.
For what it may be worth:
a) the 2 agent defendants are both Venezuelan,
b) all the players they took with them are Venezuelan,
c) the 2 agents continue to represent those players,
d) it’s plain that BEFORE the two agents ever joined the company, they were already agents for all, or all except one, and had developed relationships with all, those players, &
e) the L.A. company didn’t even have a ‘baseball division’ before the agents joined it.
More directly, your comment suggests – actually, it SAYS – that Perez dropped his agent for messing up. Well, that’s just not so: Perez has the same agent now that he had when the contract extension was signed.
More broadly, the only ways one could possibly characterize Perez’ current contract ‘woes’ is by comparing him to other top-flight MLB catchers, rather than ordinary schmoes like us. Ordinary schmoes like us don’t get to ‘suffer’ under the tyranny of a contract that pretty much guarantees us close to $30 million over 7 years. And at the time Perez signed the extension, he’d just come off his rookie MLB season, having played 39 games with just 158 PAs, & was completely under the Royals control thru 2017.
That is, the Royals COULD have chosen just to pay him the minimum for each of the next 5 years & refused to face up to his ‘proper’ value until his earliest arbitration eligible season, 2017, then traded him. That is, the Royals are potentially on the hook for close to $30m to keep him thru 2019, whereas they could have had his first 5 years for under $4m TOTAL, then made a big killing on trading him away.
Interestingly, Baseball Reference STILL lists the L.A. company as Perez’ agency, even while listing the 2 Venezuelan agents as agents for his agency-stablemate, Pablo Sandoval. Go figure.
No idea how fact check this, but really interesting post.
All public sources, all accessible free online.
Sources like Wikipedia give brief summaries and links. Sources like this one, Baseball Ref and The Cube give contract details. MLB itself provides wage minimums. And each of the agencies involved — in this case, the larger LA firm {which self-describes as an “insurance” agency, but it’s got far broader financial services & interests) and the Venezuelan agents — has a website.
Also, I have something of a particular set of ski– um, a background of experience in this type of lawsuit (tho not this particular lawsuit, or the playuhs involved). But really, all that adds is the necessary tool of understanding why things get alleged in legal claims.
Go ahead and try it yourself. If you come across something that contradicts any of this, or even just something that adds information or an interesting possibility, it could be worth it!
No, i did NOT say he dropped his agent because his agent messed up – i said his agent messed up and then he got dropped. i have no idea why the agent got dropped but to me it seems like it was because of the bad contract.
You wrote that the Royals are on the hook for $30 million. that is incorrect. the options are team options not player options. they are on the hook for $7 million.
But, i do stand somewhat corrected. the amount for which they paid to have the option to take out three total years of arb eligible and FA eligible doesnt seem that bad considering he was merely a rookie. so, i was semi wrong. i still think it was a bad deal. but definitely not egregious. my bad.
OH OH OH [huff huff huff] Actually:
You posted, quote: “an agent who messed up bad and was subsequently dropped by Perez and became a defendant on charges of fraud and breach of contract”. It’s still right up there for everyone to see, you know. Like, IN THE RECORD. And “subsequently dropped” seems, to me at least, a little odd for someone who, in fact, not dropped AT ALL.
And I, contrary to your ‘version’ of what I posted, ACTUALLY posted: “the Royals are potentially on the hook for close to $30m to keep him thru 2019”. See that pesky word, “potentially”? Whatyamean, you MISSED it?
* I meant 144 games played PER YEAR over the last two years.