Sal Perez delivered a needed jovial moment for Kansas City Royals mired in tough stretch
Star player and franchise cornerstone Salvador Perez tries to be many things and wears many hats for the Kansas City Royals.
Most of the time that means shouldering the weight of expectation or being counted on for elite performance. Other times, being a source of lightheartedness and joviality can be just as important a role to play.
Perez, the All-MLB catcher, did something he hadn’t done in nearly five years during Sunday’s win over the Toronto Blue Jays.
Something nobody associates with one of the premiere all-around catchers in the majors. Something that brought smiles to the faces of teammates, coaches, his manager and at least one opposing player. Something that momentarily wiped away some of the angst of a club having lost 15 of 18 games.
Perez hit a ball into the right field corner, saw it carom off the wall past a defender and turned on the afterburners to go for a triple. Those are no ordinary afterburners. They’ve endured parts of 11 seasons in the majors, supporting a 6-foot-3, 255-pound 32-year-old frame that takes the pounding of catching on a near daily basis.
That triple, just the 11th of his career, marked his first mad dash from home to third in one swoop since July 19, 2017.
“Five years ago,” Perez said. “Wow. That happens when you become a catcher.”
Asked half-jokingly if he was thinking triple out of the box, Perez exclaimed through a wide smile and hearty laughter, “No! No way.”
“I think it was just a fly ball to right field,” Perez said. “I didn’t hit that ball pretty good, but the wind helped me a little bit. It hit the wall. As soon as I saw it past (Raimel) Tapia, I had a chance. That’s why I went for it.”
The five-time Gold Glove winner and four-time Silver Slugger recipient looked up from his head-first slide into third base and recognized the excitement on the faces of teammates in the dugout. He even saw the same thing on the face of Blue Jays first baseman Vladimir Guerrero, shocked and impressed at Perez having legged out a triple.
Royals manager Mike Matheny couldn’t help but grin when he referred, unprompted, to Perez “showing off his speed.”
“I was pushing him from the dugout,” Matheny quipped.
Royals starting pitcher Brady Singer was still in college the last time Perez tripled.
“I was rooting him on,” Singer said. “I was screaming at the TV. That was sweet.”
That brief cheerful interjection might be a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things, but the Royals have been scuffling as they pushed past the one-third mark of the season.
They came into the day with the worst record in the majors at 17-37, having been shutout in consecutive games for the first time in more than a year.
A win, some contagious offense and a little laughter might help ease the tension.
Making an effort to enjoy wins
“I’ve always said that I think you’re only being fair to yourself if you’re being equal with the amount of joy you get from the wins and with the struggle of the losses,” Matheny said. “Theoretically, it sounds ground. In application, I stink at it.
“I know those guys need that. I don’t want them to fall into what I’ve fallen into. Enjoy the wins. These are hard to come by. That’s, I believe, how you continue to see them. You’ve got to celebrate them. They’ve got to be special. Every one of them is.”
Perez, the senior statesmen of the club’s everyday lineup and a former World Series MVP, wears losses hard but always espouses the importance of turning the page to the next day and the next “opportunity.”
“We show up everyday to try to win some games,” Perez said. “I agree with what (Matheny) said. We need to enjoy every win, no matter what, no matter what’s the situation.”
Center fielder Michael A. Taylor pointed to the way the club performed on Wednesday as a sign of their collective desire to win.
Staring at potentially being swept and losing a fourth consecutive game, they took an early lead in the first inning and saw it fade away into a tie game by the end of the third.
They scored the game’s next five runs.
“Once it got back tied up, for us to fight back and get the lead again and build on it just speaks on where we’re at,” Taylor said. “We’re not going to give up. We’re still fighting and believe that we can go out there and win games.”
Taylor was a part of a Washington Nationals team in 2019 that engineered one of the great in-season turnarounds in MLB history. The Nationals were 19-31 through their first 50 games, earned a wild card berth into the playoffs and won the World Series.
Taylor spent a chunk of that season in the minors, but there’s undoubtedly a lesson he carries with him from that experience.
“When you fall behind like that, you just have to believe that you can come back from anything,” Taylor said. “Whether it’s 14-35, or whatever we are, or 19-32, what the Nationals were. Just fighting and not giving up is the biggest thing.”
For two-time All-Star Whit Merrifield, there’s an acknowledgment that each win should be celebrated as Matheny contends.
But there’s also just as strong of an acknowledgment that the Royals haven’t done enough winning lately to satisfy themselves.
“You enjoy wins,” Merrifield. “I wish we could’ve done it more often at this point, but we are where we are. We’ve just got to keep moving forward and trying to win more games so we can feel like this more often.”
