Houston Astros: 3 reasons to pry Salvador Perez away from the Royals
By T.A. Mock
As a five-time gold glove winner, Perez is the ideal fit
The final reason why the Houston Astros need to attempt to pry Perez away from the Royals is his great defensive ability. He is a huge man, standing at 6’4″ and weighing 240 lbs, yet he is also still a phenomenal athlete. Plays like this one prove that and show why he is now a five-time gold glove award winner.
Perez is just phenomenal behind the dish. He is among tops in the league in nearly every aspect of defense as a catcher. Perez caught nearly half of those who attempted to steal against him, 48.1% of them to be exact. He was only behind Maldonado in this metric. Amazingly, Perez also managed to turn 11 double plays as a catcher, the most in the league.
Perez and Maldonado are actually very similar guys behind the plate but they differ in one major, very painful way that many fans will remember. Maldonado struggles majorly with passed balls which was one of the reasons the Astros imploded in the ALCS. Perez, on the other hand, is adept at stopping pitches in the dirt and only allowed four passed balls in over 800 innings of work.
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One of the things that allows Perez to be so great behind the plate is agility. It manifests itself in stopping passed balls and in catching base runners. Perez is a top ten catcher when it comes to pop time, that is the amount of time it takes him to get out of his stance and into a throwing position. He also had the second-best exchange rate, the amount of time to transfer the ball from the glove to the hand, to pair with a good arm.
The only aspect that Perez struggles with is pitch framing. However, that is easily offset by the incredible trust and respect he commands from his pitching staff. Perez is a phenomenal catcher behind the plate and overlooking his struggles in pitch framing get pretty easy while looking at the rest of his metrics.
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Perez is in the conversation for the best catcher in the league along with Realmuto and Willson Contreras. The Houston Astros would do well to acquire Perez as he won’t be a free agent until 2022. He’ll be expensive because of that but he’ll be more than worth it due to his impressive blend of offense and defense.