Salvy is defying Father Time

The 33-year-old is playing better than ever.

Reports of Salvador Perez’s demise were premature.

It was just last July that Salvy was slumping. His on-base percentage dropped below .290, he went three weeks without a home run, and his OPS fell to .701. Matthew LaMar, among others, suggested that perhaps the former World Series MVP was succumbing to the same age-related decline that virtually every player experiences.

Since May 28, he’s hit .183/.226/.270, striking out ten times for every walk he’s taken. Could he bounce back? Absolutely. It’s just that, at some point, he won’t. That might be now. He’s 33 and has caught 9800 big league innings with all the physical toll that comes with it. This could be it.

He did bounce back from a June slump to put up decent numbers in the second half last year, but Matthew wasn’t wrong in noting a decline in the slugger. Overall Salvy posted a .714 OPS, the fourth consecutive year he had posted a decline in that stat.

We know based on decades of player performance that hitters tend to peak around age 27-28, then begin to decline. Salvy turns 34 years old next week. The trick is to make that decline gradual, rather than fall off a cliff.

But Salvy took a look at Father Time and said, “nah, I’ll pass.”

Salvador Perez returned this season rejuvenated, and has gotten off to a sensational start. He leads the league with a .355 batting average, and has the most RBI with 26. Only nine players in baseball have hit more than his seven home runs.

Here is a list of catchers who played at least 20 games in March/April and posted an OPS over 1.000 in their age-34 season or older.

Salvador Perez, Royals (2024) - .355/.415/.598 in 30 games

Gary Carter, Mets (1988) - .333/.432/.682 in 20 games

That’s it. That’s the list.

The last catcher to post a 1.000 OPS (min. 20 games started) in ANY month in their age-34 season or older was Jorge Posada in September of 2007.

And it hasn’t been flukey. He is hitting the ball hard. Here’s his Baseball Savant page. Red is good. Salvy has a LOT of red.

But it’s not just power. The knock on Salvy has been his propensity to swing at anything within a five-block radius of home plate. But so far this year he has the tenth-lowest strikeout rate in baseball. He has already drawn ten walks - his career high is 28. While he has the fifth-highest swing rate in baseball, he is seeing fewer strikes than anyone in baseball, and is showing some restraint.

The other knock on Salvy in his career has been his abysmal pitch-framing, which is why his defensive metrics are so low despite playing the demanding catcher position well otherwise. It is too early to conclude his work with Paul Hoover has paid off, but he is off to a very good start in pitch framing metrics this year.

Jesse Newell at the Star wrote about some of the changes recently.

“He was super far away from the plate two years ago — probably one of the worst,” Hoover said. “And now he’s up there with the best guys.”

That’s only been part of Perez’s evolution. Hoover said that when Perez is not doing well with his framing, he takes an indirect route to the ball. He starts above it, then goes down for the pitch, then brings it back up. In essence, it’s a bouncing motion.

Constant drills now train something different. Perez keeps his glove mostly still and low as the pitch comes in, then works on receiving it low-to-high — one of the biggest keys to making low pitches look like strikes.

Moving closer to the plate and changing his approach to low pitches has made a difference.

The baseball season is a marathon not a sprint, so there’s still a long way to go. Salvy has tended to slump during the hot summer months when the burden of crouching behind the plate hundreds of times takes its toll. Manager Matt Quatraro will need careful load management to ensure his slugger is fresh if the team finds itself in a post-season push.

But it’s so much fun to see the ebullient All-Star defying the odds and excelling at his age. If he can defy Father Time, why can’t we? It’s enough to make me want to go out and run a marathon!

Ow, my knee! On second thought, I’ll just watch Salvy continue to rake from my couch.