Salvy's Big Week

A 5-2 week was made possible because Salvador Perez had a week he'll never forget.

When you enter a week hitting .185/.290/.444 and end it hitting .291/.339/.618, it’s pretty clear you had a huge week. It was the first time in the three-week-old season that the Royals played seven games in a week and Salvador Perez took full advantage. It highlights how early season numbers are hard to trust but even so, it takes a pretty amazing week in order to raise your average and slugging percentage that much. It also takes a pretty typical Salvy walk to see the gap between average and OBP drop that quickly, but that’s another story. 

Let’s take a look at what Salvy has done this week:

• He went 4-4 on Monday against the Angels, which included his 1,000th career hit.

• He went 2-4 with a double and an RBI on Tuesday against the Angels, in a game that ended with him picking off the would-be tying run on third base with two outs in the ninth inning.

• He went 2-4 on Wednesday with a home run and another RBI in a 6-1 win over the Angels.

• In Game Two of the double header on Saturday evening, he went 2 for 4 and hit a walkoff home run in the bottom of the seventh inning. The home run was the longest of his career and also, you know, won the game.

• In the series finale yesterday against the Blue Jays, he hit a 441 foot two-run home run that scored the only two runs of the game.

So yeah, it was a good one. In total, he hit .393/.393/.786 with three home runs, two doubles and seven runs batted in. Oh and he also caught one of two would be base stealers. And also that pickoff. So again, yes, a very good week. 

Since the start of 2020, he’s hit .322/.349/.629 in 51 games and 215 plate appearances. In the five years before Perez missed the 2019 season, he hit .254/.285/.438, which, for a catcher is acceptable enough, but also was good enough for a wRC+ of only 91. That’s quite a transformation that probably can’t simply be explained by a new ligament in his elbow. Though that would be pretty fun. 

My personal opinion is that it goes back to the work he did with Mike Tosar before he came back in 2020. One of the things that seems to be a hallmark of the players who work with Tosar is that they do more damage on the pitches they’re supposed to do damage on. Take a look at his numbers on pitches inside the zone in 2020-2021 compared with 2014-2018.

The sample is obviously miniscule. But it’s also undeniable how much better he has been on pitches inside the strike zone. Perez has always had a swing that was designed to do damage, but it seems different now. Maybe it’s me seeing what I want to see, but it just seems like he knows his meal ticket is to hit the ball hard. Take a look at this swing from 2017. It was a swing to do damage, but it wasn’t what we’ve seen recently. 

Now look at his walkoff home run from Saturday evening. I don’t know about you, but I see a swing with some serious intent to crush. There’s more violence to this swing.

Yes, he swings and misses more than he did before this transformation, but he has turned himself into a much better hitter by being able to take pitches he’s supposed to hit hard and actually truly hitting them hard. His plate discipline hasn’t gotten any better, though he has matched his 2020 walk total already, but the ability to do what he does now gives him far more offensive value than we’ve ever seen before. 

If this is truly the player he will be going forward, his bat actually carries as a designated hitter or a first baseman if that’s what needs to happen with his career going forward. But that’s honestly a question for another day and something to worry about later. For now, Perez is doing his thing on pitches inside the zone and currently carrying the Royals struggling offense. At least he did during his big week.

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Crown Jewels

Singer Shining

I talked last week about Brady Singer throwing simply too many hittable pitches and he came out in the first inning and looked amazing. He was working on the edges of the zone with a really good two-seamer and his slider was biting very well. I thought he looked as good as he has in just about any start outside of maybe the no-hit bid in Cleveland last season. He had Blue Jays hitters guessing and allowed only two hard-hit balls all game, back to back from Bo Bichette (at a ridiculous 112.4 MPH) and Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. in the fifth inning. Watch this gif of where his pitches were by inning.

I didn’t really see a lot of people clamoring for him to come back out for the seventh, but I very much liked Mike Matheny’s decision to go to the bullpen and bring in Kyle Zimmer in spite of the bottom of the order coming up and Singer being at only 90 pitches. If you see the sixth inning above, you can see that he was starting to leave pitches in the middle of the zone. The two hard hit balls were in the fifth inning as well, so the last two innings potentially pointed to future trouble. And as I said on Twitter, Matheny had two options for that seventh inning. He could bring Singer out for the seventh and pull him if he allowed a base runner because he wouldn’t want Singer facing anyone a fourth time. If he did that, a reliever would have to clean up a mess in a tie game. Or he could bring in one of his many impact arms in a clean inning. Singer pitched great, but I actually loved Matheny pulling him there.

Back-to-Back Staumont

Of all the pitchers in the Royals bullpen, Josh Staumont is the one who screams closer with his 100+ MPH fastball and his nasty curve. It’s the kind of stuff that you want to count on to close out games. This particular Royals bullpen has enough weapons that they don’t need a single closer named and there are others who can do the job if that’s what the organization wants. But something that is incredibly important in getting the bullpen to its best form is something Staumont has struggled with in the past (in a very, very small sample), and that’s going back-to-back days.

He’s only pitched in 48 games now in his entire big league career, so there’s only so much data we can look at, but in previous appearances on no rest, Staumont had gone 5.2 innings in seven games and allowed nine runs on 11 hits with seven strikeouts and eight walks and three home runs. In the rest of his games, he’s gone 46 innings in 40 appearances and allowed 12 runs on 34 hits. He’s struck out 49 and walked 19 with three home runs allowed. So with a two-run lead in the eighth inning yesterday, when Staumont came to the mound, I was curious. He threw 10 pitches and got out of the inning. I’m still curious to see how he does in these situations moving forward since his average velocity was 96.7 MPH, down from his season average of 98. Spin rates were down as well. So the results were there. It was a good first test in a long season. Now we wait to find out if he can do it again.