The Captain of a Sunken Ship - The Salvy Rant
In a season full of finger pointing and crucifying anger, there are many reasons and faults for the 2026 Royals being as bad as they are. So bad, in fact, that their 35-53 record is currently tied with the Colorado Rockies, the poster child of organizational incompetence in the current era, for the worst in baseball. It's also tied with the 2022 Royals through their first 88 games of the season, the season I have since claimed to be the "worst ever." The worst ever keeps getting worser, a true statement of our time.
But for all the sludge getting hurled at management and ownership (some of it deserved, some not, the truth is in the middle i'm a neutral fence sitter etc.) there's a glaring problem with this Royals team that isn't getting talked about much. And that's understandable, because I'd also rather not talk about it. The hero's not supposed to lose. Whoever's writing this plot sucks because I don't like what's happening here:
The Captain of the Kansas City Royals is the worst player in baseball.
By FanGraphs WAR, Salvador Perez is not only dead last, but more than twice as negative as the second-worst player, and worse than the 2-4 worst put together. He's almost worse than every other negative-value player put together. He is more than five times worse than however bad you think Isaac Collins and Vinnie Pasquantino have been put together.
We know that FanGraphs can be disagreeable with how it calculates its WAR sometimes, especially in regards to Salvy. Baseball-Reference is much more widely used and doesn't paint such a negative picture. By bWAR (or rWAR if you insist) Salvy is 7th worst, and because WAR is based on volume, he's arguably better than the other 24 players in the screenshot. It also doesn't include pitchers, a few of which are even worse than -1.0 bWAR.
So, there is an angle that paints him as not catastrophically terrible, but it's still not clearing the bar of good or even subpar. By Fielding Run Value, he's 3rd worst among all fielders, and by OPS, he's last among all qualified hitters. I'm not a WAR literalist; it and FRV are very flawed metrics, among many similar values that get flung around in discussions. But even without 1-to-1 application, there's just no denying that Salvy has more of a case of being the outright worst player in baseball than anyone. Everything he's done is at the bottom of the scale.
I'd love to make the argument that "well at least he comes through when needed!" but A. the team is 35-53, and B. he's actually slugging .200 with runners in scoring position. Let me reiterate: .200 is Salvy's slugging percentage with RISP, not his batting average. I could spend 10 minutes looking for batting numbers to cherrypick, but a .568 OPS, the lowest of any qualified hitter in baseball, says enough. Whether you agree or not that Salvy's defense is good and/or that his leadership matters matters little, as Salvy has been a bat-first catcher for, really, the last decade or so.
Now, I don't think pointing out that Salvy sucks this year is actually some controversial opinion that I'm expecting pushback on. But my frustration with this cursed reality stems from a more difficult and long-running problem the Royals have.
To put it bluntly, Salvy isn't as good as the Royals think he is, and rarely ever has been.
The Royals captained Salvy in 2023 and, since 2024, have been enthusiastically putting him into Hall of Fame discussions. I don't think they're wrong for either of these things, Salvy's great and he really does have a case to get in. But what I haven't agreed with is that it's a surefire thing, and that's often where the team steers the conversation.
Now, I get it, it's a matter of building public support, they want everyone on their side, again they're not wrong for this. I just believe it involves an unspoken truth, that it would naturally happen as long as Salvy kept playing and stayed productive. ...That's the problem. That's why it's difficult for many to talk about how bad he's been this season.
If Salvy retires at the end of the year, his case isn't exactly thrown out the window, but it certainly becomes a lot less agreeable. 35 bWAR would be the lowest of anybody outside of some real special cases, and we just won't even bring up the fWAR. In fact, I hate the WAR argument completely because both WARs say different things and thus prove how it shouldn't be taken so literally... but then I just bring up that Salvy has one top-10 MVP finish and two low-ballot appearances, and that's it. Three seasons where baseball collectively said "yeah this was a pretty standout player" out of fifteen. You're basically making the argument that this is the worst Hall of Famer ever. Staying on one team does net him some extra brownie points, but it didn't make a case for Kyle Seager or Ryan Zimmerman being Hall of Famers.
This can all be handwaved by counting stats, however. The naturally good ending for this story is Salvy playing until he's 40, averaging 20 homers a season, and becoming the second catcher ever to hit 400 home runs. Boom, done, case closed, he's a guaranteed first ballot Hall of Famer. That's what I want, that's what the Royals want, that's what everyone who loves Salvador Perez wants, and anyone who doesn't love Salvador Perez probably doesn't deserve to have kidneys. This is just my extremely subjective opinion, though.
The Royals are giving Salvy every opportunity to boost his case.... and that's the problem. They have put this player on a pedestal, and he is now (one of) the worst player(s) in baseball. I don't just point this out to lament the current state of the Royals, but to point out the root cause. The Royals didn't feel the need to aggressively push for a premium bat in the off-season, opting instead to improve by the margins, because they wanted another magical playoff season led by Future Hall of Famer Salvador Perez!! Sure, another reason was because of the market not providing much of what the Royals needed, and another is that the payroll was already high for the team's market size and revenue, but I also think a big reason for the team's lack of contingency is that they just didn't want to have it. They put it all in the hands of the Captain, and the Captain drove them off a cliff.
That's what makes this season suck so bad. It's one thing to disagree with Whit Merrifield, it's another to see Salvador Perez be an untenable player, and it's why the conversation is difficult. A normal team would probably just cut him at the end of the year, or even earlier, because it's a lost cause, who cares. But Salvy isn't a "who cares" player, the Royals can't just do that. They can't just have everyone wake up one day and find out that Salvy isn't around anymore. That's just not right. That can't be the way this ends.
...but how long can it continue? How long can the team reasonably keep the narrative alive? How much can leadership and work ethic and any other unquantifiable elements of Salvy outweigh the detrimental effects of his on-field performance?
Back in 2024, some floated the idea of bringing back Zack Greinke to top off the tidal wave of free agents brought in that season, giving him one last push to 3,000 to really make it a magical season. I wasn't interested in that. The idea of that contradicted the truly serious effort of building a contender. I feel that a similar conversation needs to be had about Salvy now. Do we want to see a player chase milestones, or do we want to see the team actually accomplish something? I don't think my opinion matters more than anyone's, but I definitely prefer the latter a lot more than the former.
The (potentially) good news is that Salvy's under contract for next year, so he's not retiring or getting cut at the end of this year anyway. He's going to be back and he's going to have his shot at redemption. I hope he turns it around and we can all get what we want. It can't be assumed that he definitely will, though, because if he doesn't... well, we might be in an even worse position, somehow. This isn't something that can be dragged out. You can't assume tomorrow will be better by just waiting for today to end. That's how we got here in the first place.
