Salvador Perez provides salve for the Royals

After the listless Royals lost 4-0 to Texas on Friday and fell for the eighth time in 10 games, typically gabby Salvador Perez dressed quietly by his locker in a corner of the clubhouse.

But if his unusually subdued demeanor suggested a toll from the Royals’ recent slump, Perez was concisely eloquent when asked if he was concerned about where this is all going.

“No. Why?” he said, shrugging. “It’s baseball.”

That made for a fine prelude to what was to come Sunday at Kauffman Stadium, where Perez’s eighth-inning home run in a 4-3 win over Texas provided dazzling testimony to his point about the ebb and flow of a season … and perhaps a preview of better days ahead.

Baseball is all about the long haul and navigating upticks and downturns, but it’s also about what triggers these turns — some more tangible than others.

“Those are the moments that get your momentum,” said reliever Ryan Madson, who was among those in the bullpen yelling “get up, get up” after Perez uncoiled the line drive right at them. “And baseball is all about momentum.”

Momentum, though, is an elusive commodity to cultivate or maintain.

If there were a particular secret to avoiding slumps, manager Ned Yost reminded this weekend, no one would ever be in one.

Still, if you drew up something that might have a chance to be a catalyst or a reset button, it might look a lot like what happened Sunday.

The Royals had lost nine of their last 11 games, which to some render meaningless the fact they started the season 7-0 and had won eight of their previous 10.

Then there was this:

A 3-0 lead and a gem of a start by Jeremy Guthrie had been squandered in the seventh inning, when Guthrie was yanked after allowing his second and third hits of the game and Kelvin Herrera uncharacteristically was unable to snuff out the threat.

That didn’t mean the cause was lost.

But it did mean that with Perez at the plate and two outs in the bottom of the eighth that Yost was engrossed in thinking about how to deploy his bullpen with the likelihood of extra innings looming.

He started thinking more about that after Perez guessed first-pitch fastball and swung and missed at a slider in the dirt from Keone Kela, a rookie pitcher he hadn’t faced before.

Herrera and Wade Davis already had pitched, so Yost was thinking through the sequence with Greg Holland, Madson and Luke Hochevar and Jason Frasor — and fretting that he might have to use Franklin Morales for a fourth day in a row.

Thus occupied, his fleeting thought of Perez’s at-bat was along the lines of this: He hoped Kela would make a two-strike mistake and that he wouldn’t try to Perez in and snuff him out with another slider in the dirt.

Yost considers Perez a “dangerous hitter,” and Perez had homered Saturday. But, after all, Yost also knows well that Perez is susceptible to balls out of the strike zone.

Then came the 1-2 pitch, an ill-considered 97 mph fastball.

The ball wasn’t “three inches off his bat,” Yost said, when he started screaming, “yeah, yeah” and urging it out.

“And, boom, then you can throw all that stuff that was just going through your mind out the door,” he said, “because you’ve got (Holland pitching) with a one-run lead.”

It’s too soon to say whether fretting fans can throw out all the stuff that’s been going through their minds recently.

Still, this was a riveting scene that revived the ninth sellout crowd of the season (38,202), which had been hushed by the circumstances that were pointing to what would have been a deeply deflating loss.

Suddenly, here was Perez bounding around the bases, hurrying to the dugout to do that celebration thing he works on with Mike Moustakas and responding to a curtain call.

Then Holland shut down the Rangers in the ninth, and thousands stayed to chant “Salvy” as Joel Goldberg of Fox Sports Kansas City interviewed him on the field.

That’s an “unbelievable” feeling, said Perez, who did not absorb the Gatorade bath he typically inflicts on other designated stars of the game.

“Nobody can take my job,” he said, laughing.

He didn’t mean it this way, but the words served to remind that this came two days after his inelegant and poorly timed public statement of a desire to see his contract enhanced.

That talk is all for another time.

Yet it’s also true that hitting his team-leading eighth home run to win a much-needed game as the Royals (31-23) travel to Minnesota to play the first-place Twins (33-23) might be considered a worthy negotiating point one day.

It remains to be seen, of course, whether this is a blip or a pivot point.

Undeniably, though, it is something to build from that wasn’t there a day before, a spark that could catch — and that at least for the moment backed up Perez’s spoken faith Friday that there was nothing to fret about.

“It takes,” Madson said, “little moments like that.”

This story was originally published June 7, 2015 at 6:43 PM with the headline "Salvador Perez provides salve for the Royals."