Kansas City Royals star Sal Perez chasing Rodriguez, not Fisk for AL catcher record
Kansas City Royals All-Star catcher Salvador Perez has unleashed a rare home-run barrage this season, particularly for a catcher. However, he’s farther away from putting his name into the record books than initially thought.
Perez hit his 37th home run Saturday, which put him in second place in the majors behind Los Angeles Angels star Shohei Ohtani’s 41. Perez has homered in four consecutive games, including back-to-back games with grand slams.
With his career-high 37 homers, Perez has matched Hall of Famer Carlton Fisk’s high-water mark of 37 homers as the most for an American League player who played at least 75% of his games at catcher in the season.
However, the Elias Sports Bureau passed along a clarification to the Royals in regards to the official AL record for catchers. The recognized record only counts home runs hit while playing catcher.
Twelve of Perez’s home runs this season have come as a designated hitter, so just 25 of the homers count towards the official record.
In the official record tally, Perez is actually chasing Hall of Famer Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez and not Fisk. Rodriguez hit 35 homers, all as a catcher, in 1999. Fisk had 33 while playing catcher.
Perez, who was designated hitter in Saturday night’s 4-2 win against the Seattle Mariners, sits 10 back of Rodriguez’s record.
Entering Sunday’s series finale in Seattle, Perez has played in 128 games (127 starts) this season. He’d started 98 at catcher and 29 as the DH. He also moved from DH to catcher in the late innings of multiple games.
In regard to Royals history, Perez continues to move up among several franchise leader boards.
His 189 career homers are one shy of former teammate Alex Gordon (190) for fourth place in Royals history and four shy of Amos Otis for third place (193).
Perez’s 627 career RBIs put him one behind former teammate Billy Butler (628) for seventh in franchise history.
And with 1,128 career hits, Perez is four shy of former teammate Eric Hosmer (1,132) for 10th in club history.
This story was originally published August 28, 2021 at 4:07 PM.
