Appreciating Salvador Perez

Reflections on the joys and privilege of cheering for a franchise legend

If you have any awareness of the professional sports landscape outside of baseball, you’re likely very aware that the Dallas Mavericks shocked the world by trading away their young superstar and face of the franchise Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers. I was putting my phone to bed and checked it one last time on that Saturday night when I saw the news of the trade break. Like so many others, I was completely floored by the trade and have been captivated by the fallout ever since. I stayed up way too late that night looking at Reddit and Mavs Moneyball and have devoted too much time and mental energy consuming content around the details and reasoning behind that trade, as well as reading all the comments from Mavericks’ fans as they processed what their team had chosen to do.

There are so many angles of this trade to explore (I think an entire sports business class can be taught on just this trade), but the one I keep coming back to is how Mavericks management seemed to fundamentally not understand how important Dončić the person was to the fanbase and what he represented to the community of Mavs fans. I think Ben Zadjel from Mavs Moneyball explains this well:

“All of this—blogs that recap every game and every roster move, podcasts discussing the team ad nauseum, watch parties with friends, wearing team gear, going to games with family, investing hours and dollars on end—happens at a smaller scale, sure, but it’s nothing like when there’s a franchise player to rally behind. When the team has a chance to contend every year. The community is emboldened and it just matters in a way it doesn’t when the team is buried at the bottom of the standings.

All that camaraderie, togetherness, and team pride, ties the city together. And sure, the franchise isn’t a nonprofit, they’re not out here just doing community service. But all those good feelings, they translate into money for the owners, so it should matter to them as well.

With the Dončić trade, though, it shows that it doesn’t matter, for Harrison or this ownership group. And if that’s the case, if all this can be ripped away by just one guy bent on trading for his buddies, how much can fans actually invest in this?”

I don’t want to overstate my case here, no baseball player can have the same impact on a baseball team that one basketball player can have as far as on-the-court success. There are, however certain players that for various reasons fanbases just connect with more than others. Some of that is longevity, a lot of it is how well someone performed in high-stakes moments, and some it is difficult to quantify but easy to observe. Some players just matter more than others, they are the main characters in this story that we are all participating in, and in Dallas, Dončić was one of those guys.

Seeing what has happened in Dallas and how so many fans feel betrayed has made me look at my favorite teams and caused me to reconsider my appreciation for the main characters that have been with us through thick and thin. For the Kansas City Royals, Salvador Perez is one of our main characters and he has been for a long time, and I’m extremely grateful that heading into the 2025 season that he remains in that spot.

It’s probably a good thing I don’t have any public receipts on Perez and the Royals during the lean years, because I was definitely clamoring for him to be traded during that time. When Perez remained a Royal after the 2023 trade deadline and no trade to the Chicago White Sox or Miami Marlins materialized during that summer, I was disappointed that he was still on the team. I did not see last season coming at all, and I felt sure that the Royals front office had blown their last opportunity to get anything useful in return for the catcher.

Then last year happened, I was able to enjoy Perez the player and human on a whole new level. He looked rejuvenated at the plate, hitting a cool .270/.330/.456, good for a 115 wRC+, his best offensive season since 2021. Perez went viral for a truly heartwarming wiffle ball game with some local kids, and also received the prestigious Roberto Clemente award.

The Royals as a team also had their best season since 2015, which made Perez’s resurgence feel all that much sweeter. A great season by a team legend towards the end of their career is wonderful, but it can feel empty if it comes in a losing season overall. I would assume the vast majority of us are Royals fans more than Perez fans and ultimately want the team to have success, but in my time away from writing and following baseball more like a “normal” fan, I came to realize how much easier it is to root and cheer for a team if you are attached to at least a couple of the players. It frankly surprised me how attached I had become to Perez, even during the down seasons.

Now, it isn’t exactly breaking news that fans of sports teams like their favorite players, but I definitely used to ascribe more to a “you’re just cheering for laundry, the players are interchangeable, you’d be fine if they switched the team out every year if they still win,” kind of philosophy. And there is a lot of truth in that philosophy; we don’t want the Royals to become more of a social club and less of a competitive baseball team like the Colorado Rockies. Yet, there is this wonderful alchemy that happens when your team wins and you have some mainstays to cheer for; when you have these seemingly larger-than-life characters whose journeys and arcs you have followed and you get to see them persevere through struggles, watch them as they come back to find success again.

The Dončić trade was dumb for the Mavericks on so many fronts, but even if they had found success after the trade and not been dealing with the injury plague like they are Pharaoh in the time of Exodus, that success would have been hollowed out by removing the main character of their team and trying to replace him with a bunch of new faces that people haven’t had time to care about. As sports fans, we understand that many guys come and go, and that players get old, worse and retire. Even still, there are certain guys who because of their performance, personality, character and time spent with the team that just mean more, that come to be identified with the team itself and to me, Perez is one of those guys. I haven’t always thought this way, but I’ve come to realize that I’m greedy as a sports fan. I don’t just want to cheer for laundry to win, I want to be able to know and identify with the people who wear that laundry and watch them win in the process. You can’t do that with every guy, which is why it makes it so important to have a few main characters in this show that we all love to engage with.

Perez is 34 years old and has played a lot of baseball at the hardest position to play on your body in the game. His lack of plate discipline has always left him vulnerable to big fluctuations in his offensive performance. It could all come crashing down this year and it wouldn’t be the most surprising outcome. Even if Perez has a successful season, this could be the last year of his deal with the team and he could choose to continue his career elsewhere.

That harsh reality, and the harsh reality that the team and their choices that we invest in are outside of our control, has led me to appreciate the season that we witnessed from Perez last season even more in retrospect. I’m so grateful that we got to see Perez succeed and help lead this team back to the playoffs last season. I’m so grateful that the Royals have another main character in Bobby Witt Jr. so that whenever Perez does leave, we will have someone else who can pick up the leadership and face of the team mantle. And I’m determined to be grateful and appreciate the privilege that I have had and continue to have to cheer for Perez on a team with playoff aspirations once again.