Royals go with the experienced option in Martin Maldonado to replace Salvador Perez
Those who don’t know history are bound to repeat its mistakes, and the Royals wanted no part of being caught without adequate depth at the catcher position when one of the best defenders at the position remained a free agent.
Martin Maldonado arrived at Royals camp on Monday as the team’s newest signing. The Royals made the signing official on Monday after having agreed to terms on Saturday.
Maldonado, 32, signed a one-year deal that will pay him $2.5 million plus another $1.4 million in performance bonuses for up to 100 games played, a source told The Star.
Monday, the Royals also placed catcher Salvador Perez on the 60-day injured list following Tommy John surgery.
“He’s a guy that is going to help us big time, even though we felt good with Cam (Gallagher) and (Meibrys) Viloria,” Royals manager Ned Yost said of Maldonado. “You have to have to depth. We talk about pitching depth. You’ve got to have catching depth. It’s tough going into it with two guys on your roster, really, that have experience.”
“You know, (general manager) Dayton (Moore) said it. Even Columbus had three ships when he went to search for America. Right. You’ve gotta have three catchers somewhere.”
The Royals will most likely have a bevy of inexperienced pitchers on their staff this season, and Maldonado will be asked to shepherd them through the season.
Brad Keller, who jumped from Double-A to the majors last season, will be in just his second season and first as a full-time starter. The rotation could also include Heath Fillmyer and Jorge Lopez, and none of those three have made more than 20 starts in the majors.
Yost said the reports on Maldonado out of both the Houston Astros and LA Angels were that the pitchers loved working with him. Yost called Maldonado a “perfect fit for us.”
“When I saw that Salvy was hurt and then I find out that they called, I knew there was a chance to come here,” Maldonado said.
Maldonado said he’d experience some anxious moments because he didn’t sign with a team by the time spring training started. But he expects to be ready for opening day, March 28, despite having missed four weeks since pitchers and catchers reported to Arizona.
“I’ve been doing everything. I live in Puerto Rico, so it’s not that cold over there,” Maldonado said. “I can do workouts. I was working out at the stadium down there, pretty much doing everything, pretty much running my own spring training.”
The Royals had scoured for catching depth prior to Perez’s injury, according to Moore. They thought as many as 14 veteran catchers could be available at the end of spring training.
In the aftermath of All-Star catcher and Gold Glove and Silver Slugger winner Perez’s season-ending elbow surgery, the Royals were left with two options. They could hand the reins over to a pair of inexperience players with potential and upside in Cam Gallagher and Meibrys Viloria, who have 45 major-league games between them, or they could sign a veteran to fill Perez’s shoes for this years.
Viloria was called up from High-A at the end of last season. He’ll likely start the season at either Double-A or Triple-A.
“At the end of the day, we felt we really needed more depth,” Moore said. “To have a guy and to have a guy like Martin Maldonado, who is one of the elite catch and throw guys in this league — we think that his power still has some potential as well. Last year, his power numbers in the second half increased. We like that. The year before, his power numbers had been OK.
“But we really like the fact that he can shut down a running game, give our pitchers a lot of confidence as well. There’s just a lot of things that we really felt were important in making this addition.”
Last season, Maldonado played for both the Angels and Astros, who acquired him on July 26 for their playoff push. He batted .225 with a .276 on-base percentage and a .351 slugging percentage with nine home runs, 18 doubles and 44 RBI. He hit career highs with 14 home runs and 19 doubles while playing in 138 games in 2017.
Maldonado, in 2017, was the only player other than Perez to win the American League Gold Glove at catcher since Perez won five of six starting in 2013. Last season, Maldonado ranked second by throwing out 45.5 percent of runners attempting stolen bases.
He changed agents during his negotiations with the Royals from agent Scott Boras’ The Boras Corporation to MVP Sports Group and Dan Lozano. Boras, who represents several of the top players in baseball, including Bryce Harper, is viewed as a hard-line negotiator who’d use time as leverage to get his client more money.
Asked if the change in agents helped get the deal done, Moore said, “We’d been negotiating his deal with his previous representation, and we had reached our breaking point. I mean, we were at the end of the rope with what we could do, so the deal did not change because it simply could not change. So when he changed representation, it was just a formality as far as communicating what we could do.”
