Day off Monday is just what Royals needed before Tuesday’s Wild Card game

The last time Salvador Perez spent an entire day without starting a major-league baseball game as the Royals catcher was Aug. 23. That was 37 days and 34 games ago. Over that time, Perez has played 306 of a possible 310 innings.

He has squatted behind the plate for nearly 5,000 pitches, taking the corresponding foul tips off his fingers and legs and upper body. There have been plays at the plate and counseling on the mound and homework in the meeting rooms. There have been six games immediately after getting off a plane, and five others played in the daytime after a night game.

The Royals have clinched a playoff spot in that time, then popped the champagne and showed back at the ballpark the next day to try to win a division title. Monday will be the first time in more than five weeks that Perez hasn’t started a game as a catcher.

The Royals, of course, will play their first playoff game in 29 years at Kauffman Stadium on Tuesday. They will face Oakland in a do-or-die AL Wild Card Game in front of a sold-out and rocking crowd. The energy of a starved fan base may very well have carried the Royals anyway, but baseball people will tell you they’re happy for Perez and his teammates to finally get a day of rest after a light workout on Monday.

“After (the workout) I will go to my house and my bed and I will sleep in my room for the rest of the day,” Perez says. “I will sleep until the next day. As soon as I get home, I will sleep. I will go to sleep at nine, and wake up at noon. Oh my gosh, maybe more than that.”

It’s worth noting that Perez said those words immediately after saying he is never tired on a baseball field. If he is tired away from the field, he says he forgets about it when he’s behind the plate.

Perez is more likely to grow a third eyeball than admit he is tired while in uniform. This is who he is. He caught games in Venezuela last winter despite the organization begging him not to, and he convinced the trainers and coaches he could play the day after tweaking a tendon in his knee last month.

But, privately, men around this team have seen that Perez could use a day off for some time now. The demands of a pennant race did not allow that to happen, even as Perez hit under .200 and was dropped from cleanup to seventh in the order over the last three weeks.

It’s not just Perez who could use the break. Alcides Escobar is just the fifth shortstop in the last decade to play all 162 games. Alex Gordon has had six days off all year. In recent weeks, Wade Davis has started taking a fungo bat to shag batting practice to save the wear on his arm.

Granted, this isn’t the most exciting topic, talking about rest, but it’s still true. The Royals, more than most teams (Oakland included), needed this. The only way it could be better is if the A’s and Mariners had to play a 163rd game on Monday, leaving the winner drained after traveling to Kansas City for the game on Tuesday.

The Royals missed out on their own 163rd game when the Tigers beat the Twins Sunday. Winning the division provides a much better playoff experience than the wild card, but the way it happened, the Tigers did the Royals a favor.

Ned Yost said he planned on pitching James Shields on short rest if they played a 163rd game on Monday. If the Royals lost, they would have had Jason Vargas in the playoff game.

This was a bad plan on many levels, and would’ve opened Yost — who deserves credit for leading the Royals into the playoffs — to a new wave of justified criticism for potentially using his best pitcher on short rest for a non-elimination game and then the guy who has been his worst starting pitcher for an actual elimination game.

But all of that goes away now. In its place comes the most glorious baseball scene that Kansas City has held in a generation. It will be the All-Star Game, but meaningful. It will be 1985, but in high-definition. Tickets are going for as much as $500 on the secondary market, and that’s for the upper deck. Some tickets closer to the field are going for well over $1,000.

Two years ago, Pirates fans lived through a similar party. Their playoff drought had reached 21 years before Andrew McCutchen led the Pirates into the NL Wild Card Game. Fans there turned the night into such a screaming rave that the other team’s pitcher dropped the ball on the mound.

On Tuesday, the scene inside Kauffman Stadium could be similar. This is a do-or-die game, the first playoff experience for Kansas City in a generation. Energy was never going to be an issue.

But a day off will give the Royals their best chance to play their best game when they need it most.

This story was originally published September 28, 2014 at 7:24 PM with the headline "Day off Monday is just what Royals needed before Tuesday’s Wild Card game."