Nobody deserves playoff baseball more than Salvador Perez

Salvy stayed with Kansas City through the wilderness and made it to the other side

On a brisk October night in 2010, Citizens Bank Park buzzed with anticipation and nervous energy. The back-to-back National League champs entered the seventh inning down a run against the Cincinnati Reds, facing rookie phenom Aroldis Chapman.

They rallied. Chase Utley hustled Philly out of an out on a routine-ish fielder’s choice to Scott Rolen. Jimmy Rollins drove him and Jayson Werth in on a routine fly ball to right field that Jay Bruce just decided not to catch. It was one of four errors on the night. Cincinnati scored seven runs. Two of them were earned.

Carlos Ruiz drove in the final run of the inning on a fielder’s choice, turning what was a 4-3 Reds’ lead into a 6-4 Phillies lead. The crowd still buzzed as Mike Sweeney stepped to the plate for what would be the only postseason at-bat of his career.

The third captain in the Royals’ 56-year history, Sweeney spent 13 seasons in Kansas City. He hit more than 20 homers six times, batted over .300 five times, including a .340 mark in 2002, and was an all-star five times. On the Royals’ all-time leaderboard, he ranks 1st in OPS, 1st in SLG, 2nd in AVG, and 3rd in HR. He played on just one winning team, four 100-loss teams, and eight 90-loss teams, never reaching the postseason.

He blooped a single into left-center field in his one postseason at-bat, a moment that was far more important to me as a Royals fan in 2010 than it was to a Phillies fan. That was as close to a storybook ending as Sweeney would see.

Salvador Perez, Kansas City’s fourth captain, is getting a much more fitting end. To be fair, he already had moments Sweeney and other great Royals of the post-1985 era could only dream of.

He walked off Kansas City’s first postseason win in over two decades, the first playoff game for the Royals outright since 1985. He won World Series MVP the next season. He is a nine-time all-star, a 5x Gold Glove winner, a 4x Silver Slugger, and a World Series champion.

But before this season, those days were long behind him. While post-2017 Salvy has been the far superior hitter, averaging a 112 OPS+ and 26 homers per season compared to a 96 OPS+ and 20 homers between 2013-2017, the team has been far less successful.

So much so that Kansas City looked to trade him. On their way to a 106-loss season, their third 100-loss season since 2018, general manager JJ Piccolo asked Perez’s permission to have conversations with the Texas Rangers after Jonah Heim hit the injured list four days before the trade deadline. Salvy said yes.

According to Picollo, when discussing a potential trade, Salvy asked: “How quickly do you think we can win?” At the moment, the first-year GM told his aging star that a lot would have to go right.

Trade talks with the Rangers never progressed. Talks with the Marlins also never progressed, and Perez stayed put. Nobody could have envisioned what would happen next, of course.

Former 2015 Royal Chris Young, the general manager in Texas, was more interested in bullpen help than catching help. So they continued to work with Kansas City, eventually agreeing to trade for the same reliever Mike Sweeney recorded his only postseason hit against - Aroldis Chapman.

In exchange, the Royals got 17-year-old outfielder Roni Cabrera and pitcher Cole Ragans, who had twice had Tommy John surgery with only 300 professional innings to his name. Ragans blossomed in the second half, entering 2024 as Kansas City’s Opening Day starter and pitching like an ace. He led the league in K/9 and finished second among American League pitchers in K% and fWAR.

He pitched brilliantly in Kansas City’s Game 1 Wild Card win over the Orioles, giving up zero runs across six innings of work, striking out eight batters en rout to his first career postseason win.

Salvy also recorded his first postseason hit since his 12th-inning lead-off single in Game 5 of the 2015 World Series. Jarrod Dyson replaced him as a pinch runner, eventually scoring the game-winning and championship-clinching run.

Seth Lugo pitched less brilliantly than Ragans but survived a bases-loaded, nobody-out jam in Game 2 of the Wild Card series after stifling Baltimore for the first four innings. He finished third in the AL in fWAR and was one of the many things that had to go right for Kansas City to compete.

As Picollo said, a lot had to go right to get Salvador Perez back into the postseason. A trade would have been the easiest, but this is the storybook ending. And nobody in baseball deserves it more. He never complained. He never took days off. For almost a decade of awful baseball, Salvy continued playing at an all-star level. And if he enters Cooperstown one day, it will be for his production during the dark days.

In the postseason, we often see a heightened level of emotion. We got to see that from Salvy, bellowing from behind the plate as he approached Lucas Erceg after their Game 2 win. What makes Salvador Perez special is those same bellows came when he hit his walk-off grand slam in 2018, a homer hit in front of less than 20,000 fans and pushed Kansas City’s record to 51-96.

Salvy has always been the same Salvy, in the pinnacle and in the pit. And after nine years, he is back in the ALDS.