Salvy Really Knows How to Celebrate
On the 10th anniversary of his big league debut, Salvador Perez did his thing once again.
Not many people knew what was in store for the Royals when they called up Salvador Perez from AAA to make his debut on August 10, 2011. He had hit .283/.329/.427 in 309 PA in Northwest Arkansas and .333/.347/.500 in 49 PA in Omaha. His reputation was that he was a great defender, energetic and had a cannon for an arm. His bat was….fine…but his defense was what was special. Of the people who can honestly say they knew what was to come, I think Ned Yost is the leader of that group. If he had it his way, Perez would have opened up the 2011 season with the big league club. But even Yost couldn’t have imagined what Perez has become.
It’s easy to forget now that he missed the entire 2019 season with a torn ligament in his elbow that had to be repaired with Tommy John Surgery. And as far as the rest of his career, we’ll see how it goes, but it sure seems like we’ll be talking about his career pre-TJ and post-TJ. And so far, post-TJ, things couldn’t be going much better. He’s hitting .293/.321/.551 in 148 games and 610 plate appearances. He has 30 doubles and 40 home runs in that time. No, he’s never going to walk much. His two-walk game from Monday night is the aberration of aberrations, but the guy has turned back the clock and just keeps on hitting.
And last night was quite the celebration for him. He’s a bit bigger than he was on that night in Tampa 10 years ago, but he has the same joy for the game that he always has. And in the first inning with Whit Merrifield on and one out, Nestor Cortes left a slider in the middle of the plate and up in the zone.
In the last two seasons, Perez has now hit .429 with a 1.057 SLG on pitches in that spot in the zone. He usually does his damage there on fastballs, but this slider didn’t slide much and he crushed it.
The Royals had a 2-0 lead and had runs in their sixth consecutive inning dating back to Monday night and after all the craziness, they had their first lead of the series.
Moving on to the bottom of the sixth inning, the Yankees had taken a 4-3 lead on a DJ LeMahieu single to right field. It wouldn’t be an anniversary party without Perez having a little more fun. Cortes was still in the game and this time, it took until the second pitch for him to leave a curve pretty close to that same spot and Salvy hit a towering home run to tie the game and extend his career-best home run season to 29.
And because a good party rages on a little longer than you’d expect, Perez came up in the seventh against Joely Rodriguez and absolutely smoked a single to left to give him a three-hit game. It’s his 33rd multi-hit game of the season. It’s his fourth multi-home run game of the season. It’s his seventh time with three RBIs in a game and 20th time with multiple RBIs.
There are questions about the future of the catching position for the Royals with MJ Melendez coming on strong and how the team should handle it. Can Perez be a viable designated hitter 50 times a year? 60 times? I honestly don’t know the answer to that with his lack of patience, but if the PTJ (post-TJ, come on now) Salvy can continue to crush the ball like this, it can definitely work. These 10 years have been fantastic and I, for one, am looking forward to seeing that 13 go up on the Hall of Fame in left field, but not any time soon because I’m still very much enjoying the show.
Lynch’s Up and Down Game
I’ve said before that the most interesting games for the rest of this season are the ones started by Carlos Hernandez, Kris Bubic and Daniel Lynch. I suppose you can throw today’s starter, Brady Singer, in there, but I also have my frustrations with him that we can talk about later. Actually, we’ll probably talk about those tomorrow. But today, the focus is on Daniel Lynch, who looked really, really good at times last night and super uncomfortable at times last night.
The line - 4.2 IP, 4 H, 3 R, 6 K, 4 BB - is a pretty perfect encapsulation of his game. He didn’t give up a ton of hits, but his control was all over the place, but he was getting those strikeouts, but he threw so many pitches to get through it that he just ran out of gas. His slider was really good again. He threw 24 of them, got swings on 12 and got whiffs on six. The Yankees went 1 for 7 on the slider and only hit one of them hard. It was so good.
On the whole, he was just getting tons of whiffs. On 42 total swings, the Yankees swung and missed 17 times. That 40.5 percent rate is something that I think we could all get used to seeing. And every pitch was getting them. Even his fastball, which wasn’t really getting the whiffs before had a 28.6 percent whiff rate. But he just really seemed to be struggling to control the pitch.
I love that he didn’t miss over the middle. He did throw 60 percent of those fastballs for strikes, so his ability to get the Yankees to chase on it helped quite a bit. It got hit a little bit and was the pitch that he was leaning on a couple times when he couldn’t find the zone and gave up some walks. The encouraging thing is that he pretty clearly didn’t have the command of it and he was still able to have some success.
It seemed like his outing turned a bit after a ground ball back to him from Jonathan Davis in the third. He grabbed his side a bit, and that brought a trip from the trainer. I really did think the stuff looked good from my vantage point, so maybe it’s nothing, but I did find that to be an odd coincidence.
In all, the guy was really encouraging moving forward. There will come a time when it doesn’t matter how good the slider looks or how many swings and misses he has if he can’t get through five, but this remains a development season and for now, we’ll enjoy the good. And this is good.
The good news is with all these young starters, we don’t have to wait long to have another game worth watching.
Crown Jewels
Staumont’s Resurgence
It’s been a bit of a disappointing year for Josh Staumont. By the numbers, he’s been fine. He has a 27.5 percent strikeout rate and a 3.18 ERA. He’s limited walks and he’s still incredibly difficult to hit, but it just seems disappointing because we haven’t seen the crazy high velocity and his curve just hasn’t seemed to have the same break some of the time that we saw last year in the shortened season. A lot of it, I think, comes from him missing time before the season with COVID-19 and a lot of it, I think, comes from his knee issue and his dead arm that he dealt with a few weeks back.
But it appears that Staumont is back. Last night was one of his best games. He faced four batters and retired four batters. He struck out three. His fastball averaged 97.4 MPH, which is a full MPH above his season average. He’s generally been throwing harder lately. His curve has been absolutely nasty. And the batters he faced - Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Judge, Joey Gallo and Luke Voit - basically stood no chance against him.
He now has a 1.35 ERA in his last 13.1 innings with 17 strikeouts and three walks. The Royals bullpen has been dealt some tough blows this season, but Staumont’s resurgence will be nice to see the rest of the season if he can keep it up.
Olivares Optioned…Again
When the Royals needed to use basically every pitcher in the bullpen during Monday night’s marathon, I had a fear that when they went to the minor leagues to bring up a reliever that they would option Edward Olivares again. I went through scenarios in my head where they sent down Richard Lovelady or Domingo Tapia or even Emmanuel Rivera, but I kept coming back to the idea that Olivares would ride the I-29 shuttle once again. And then about two and a half hours before the game, the team announced that Olivares was indeed sent down for Joel Payamps.
I honestly don’t have much to say about it other than the fact that I just can’t believe this keeps happening. For a long time, it made some sense because he was one of the few with options who could keep going up and down. But it makes a lot less sense now. I don’t have a huge problem with a lineup like last night’s not including Olivares (if he were on the team, of course), though it makes the inclusion of Michael A. Taylor on the roster continue to be confusing. But when they play Ryan O’Hearn and sit Olivares, it just baffles me. I really believed that after trading Jorge Soler, they were opening up some at bats for a guy who has hit .250/.308/.625 since his recall on July 31. He’s hit .322/.395/.572 in Omaha this year. I know there’s a good chance he’s nothing more than a fourth outfielder and maybe not even that, but him not getting a chance this season, especially since the deadline while some players continue to play every day is just, well, it’s insane to me. I don’t know what else to say about it.
If we really think that Witt/Mondi will be up/back soon, what about Pratto? How long has it been now with Santana way below average at the plate? He started well but it seems like for some time now he has run out of gas. Age a factor? I thought he was a slow starter. Now he seems like Salvy in past years when he caught to much and his bat died in the second half. But, Santana got a 2 year contract. My guess is that Pratto does not come up, until maybe as one of the 2 when the rosters expand in September.
I have a theory about Olivares. The short of it: I think the constant shuttling up and down probably looks a lot worse than it really is.
As a fan, I get it. I feel frustrated too. I want to see Olivares play every day. BUT, I also know how Dayton Moore runs the ship, and there's no way the Royals are letting Olivares twist in the wind. You've got to believe they let him know early on that he was going to be up and down a lot during the year. Baseball players are extremely focused individuals. They all want to be in the Major Leagues. But above all, they just want to play baseball, whenever and wherever.
The other part of this is Ryan O'Hearn. Again, as a fan, I get it. Ryan had an outstanding debut and has really seen his production go downhill since. However, I think the organization knows this is going to be it for him as a Royal, and since they love the way he prepares and works to be a good teammate, they want to give him every opportunity to show other clubs that he can handle right field and maybe turn it around at the plate.
I don't agree with either decision. I'd probably be more ruthless in my decision-making. I think it needs to be said, though, that for all their flaws, the Royals are methodical in their choices. They know what's ahead for Olivares and O'Hearn. There's a good chance they're just doing what they think is right for both players.