Players · P · DH · 2026 regular season

Salvador Perez

Kansas City Royals American League CentralDH

Age: 36
B/T: R/R
Height: 6' 2"
Weight: 255 lb
Number: #13

Born: May 10, 1990 in Valencia, Venezuela
MLB debut: August 10, 2011
Salary, 2026: $2M

Compare with…vs Jacob Gonzalez vs Brett Sullivan vs Jeremiah Jackson

dbWAR: 28.2
PA: 627
AVG: .229
OBP: .274
SLG: .383
wRC+: 74

Salvador Perez is a designated hitter for the Kansas City Royals. In 2026 he hit 21 home runs and knocked in 78 RBIs, notching 133 hits across 627 plate appearances in 152 games. His batting average was .229, 6.0% lower than the league average of .244. He reached base at a .274 clip and slugged .383, for an OPS of .656, 8.7% lower than the league mark of .719 — 11th of 15 on his team, and 322nd of 465 among MLB batters with 100+ plate appearances. He averaged 89.2 mph off the bat, hit 42.7% of balls in play at 95 mph or better, barrelled 9.8% of them and made contact on 75.0% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 74 wRC+ puts his offence 26% below average. That comes to -0.8 dbWAR — -17.0 runs with the bat, -1.8 for the ballpark, -0.5 on the bases, -2.9 on double plays, -5.3 for the position he plays, against replacement level. It includes no fielding: defensive runs are proprietary and are not estimated here, so the figure credits playing a demanding position but not playing it well.

League context

Percentile among qualified batters, 2026 regular season.

wRC+74

wOBA.286

ISO.153

BB%4.0%

WAR-.8

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2026. These terms sum to -8.1 runs, divided by runs-per-win to give WAR. There is no fielding term.

BattingBallparkBaserunningDouble playsPositionReplacement

WAR by season

Batting Regular season

Standard and advanced, by season. Regular-season games only — postseason games are listed separately below.


2026	KC	152	627	133	21	78	1	25	119	.229	.274	.383	.153	.251	4.0%	19.0%	.286	-17.0	74	-0.8
2025	KC	155	641	141	30	100	0	28	125	.236	.284	.446	.209	.251	4.4%	19.5%	.311	-2.1	100	1.9
2024	KC	158	652	160	27	104	0	44	129	.271	.330	.456	.185	.302	6.7%	19.8%	.336	+13.0	113	3.1
2023	KC	140	580	137	23	80	0	19	135	.255	.292	.422	.167	.294	3.3%	23.3%	.303	-8.5	84	1.0
2022	KC	114	473	113	23	76	0	18	109	.254	.292	.465	.211	.285	3.8%	23.0%	.325	+5.2	109	2.2
2021	KC	161	665	169	48	121	1	28	170	.273	.316	.544	.271	.298	4.2%	25.6%	.359	+23.6	124	4.7
2020	KC	37	156	50	11	32	1	3	36	.333	.353	.633	.300	.375	1.9%	23.1%	.410	+11.8	159	2.0
2018	KC	129	544	120	27	80	1	17	108	.235	.274	.439	.204	.245	3.1%	19.9%	.306	-5.2	90	0.9
2017	KC	128	499	126	27	80	1	17	95	.268	.297	.495	.227	.280	3.4%	19.0%	.332	+3.0	107	2.0
2016	KC	139	546	127	22	64	0	22	119	.247	.288	.438	.191	.280	4.0%	21.8%	.311	-4.4	89	1.7
2015	KC	141	553	138	21	70	1	13	82	.260	.280	.426	.166	.270	2.4%	14.8%	.303	-6.2	89	1.5
2014	KC	149	606	150	17	70	1	22	85	.260	.289	.403	.144	.278	3.6%	14.0%	.307	-3.2	95	2.1
2013	KC	134	526	145	13	79	0	21	63	.292	.323	.433	.141	.311	4.0%	12.0%	.332	+5.9	108	2.9
2012	KC	76	305	87	11	39	0	12	27	.301	.328	.471	.170	.299	3.9%	8.9%	.344	+6.1	116	1.8
2011	KC	39	158	49	3	21	0	7	20	.331	.361	.473	.142	.362	4.4%	12.7%	.368	+5.8	133	1.3

Separate from the regular season

Postseason Postseason

Wild Card through World Series. These games are counted on their own: none of them are in the regular-season tables, career totals, league context, leaderboards or dbWAR on this page.

Postseason batting

Postseason Salvador Perez's postseason batting, by October and round. Not part of any regular-season figure on this page.
Season	Team	Round	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
2024 Post	KC	Postseason total	6	25	24	1	5	0	1	1	0	7	.208	.240	.333	.573
		Wild Card	2	9	8	0	2	0	0	0	0	3	.250	.333	.250	.583
		ALDS	4	16	16	1	3	0	1	1	0	4	.188	.188	.375	.563
2015 Post	KC	Postseason total	16	64	58	10	15	3	4	8	4	9	.259	.328	.517	.845
		ALDS	5	18	14	3	4	0	2	4	2	3	.286	.444	.714	1.159
		ALCS	6	23	22	4	3	1	2	2	1	4	.136	.174	.455	.628
		World Series	5	23	22	3	8	2	0	2	1	2	.364	.391	.455	.846
2014 Post	KC	Postseason total	15	60	58	4	12	1	1	6	1	10	.207	.233	.276	.509
		Wild Card	1	6	6	0	1	0	0	1	0	2	.167	.167	.167	.333
		ALDS	3	13	13	0	2	0	0	1	0	4	.154	.154	.154	.308
		ALCS	4	16	15	1	1	0	0	0	1	2	.067	.125	.067	.192
		World Series	7	25	24	3	8	1	1	4	0	2	.333	.360	.500	.860
Career		Postseason total · 3 Octobers	37	149	140	15	32	4	6	15	5	26	.229	.275	.386	.661

Box-score and rate statistics only. wOBA, wRC+, FIP and dbWAR are measured against a full league season, and a postseason is a few teams playing each other for a month, so they are not computed for October.

Platoon splits

How he hits left- and right-handed pitching.

Season

Batting by the hand the pitcher throws with, 2026. Counted from play-by-play, so totals can differ from the box-score season line by a plate appearance or two.
Split	PA	AB	H	HR	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	wOBA	K%
vs LHP	176	161	43	4	8	32	.267	.314	.416	.313	18.2%
vs RHP	452	420	90	17	17	87	.214	.257	.369	.274	19.2%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2026.

Loading 468 batted balls…

Contact quality

How hard and at what angle he hits it, over 468 tracked batted balls in 2026. Percentiles are against qualified batters.

Barrel rate: 9.8%
Exit velocity: 89.2
Max exit velo: 111.3
Hard hit: 42.7%
Sweet spot: 37.0%
Launch angle: 15.2°

Barrel rate9.8%

Exit velocity89.2 mph

Hard hit rate42.7%

Contact rate75.0%

A barrel is a batted ball whose exit velocity and launch angle have historically produced at least a .500 average and 1.500 slugging — 98 mph within 26–30°, widening to 8–50° by 116 mph. Reconstructed from Statcast's published anchor points, which reproduces them exactly; the interior is within a degree. Sweet spot (8–32°) is an exact definition.

Hot and cold zones

Batting average by pitch location, 2026.

Below averageLeague averageAbove average

Batting average by location of the pitch that ended each plate appearance, catcher's view. The bordered square is the strike zone; the outer band is chase territory. Cells with fewer than 8 at-bats are left grey rather than shown as signal. League average on the same attribution is .243.

Situational hitting

How Salvador Perez hits by base state, outs, score and late-game pressure — each read against his own season line.

Split by

By who is on base when he comes up. The season line is repeated as the baseline.
Situation	PA	AB	H	HR	RBI	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	wOBA
All situations	627	—	—	—	—	—	—	.229	.274	.383	.286
Bases empty	335	315	75	14	14	14	68	.238	.279	.413	.302
Runner on first	137	128	25	3	9	5	23	.195	.248	.320	.248
Runners on	293	266	58	7	64	11	51	.218	.266	.346	.265
RISP	156	138	33	4	55	6	28	.239	.282	.370	.281

Runners on includes runners in scoring position, which is the convention every reference uses. Counted from play-by-play, 2026.

Compare Salvador Perez with…

Side by side with up to three others.

Compare with… add up to 3 more players

Salvador Perez

Or read one already written — Salvador Perez against:

Similar players

Nearest 2026 seasons by discipline, contact, power and speed, on rate statistics rather than totals.

Jacob GonzalezPIT

wRC+: 72
HR: 7
AVG: .220
WAR: 0.0

Very close

Brett SullivanCOL

wRC+: 74
HR: 7
AVG: .225
WAR: 0.3

Very close

Jeremiah JacksonBAL

wRC+: 64
HR: 10
AVG: .217
WAR: -0.4

Graham PauleyMIA

wRC+: 72
HR: 4
AVG: .211
WAR: -0.0

How these are computed

wOBA uses linear weights measured from this season's own play-by-play rather than published constants, and wRC+ is park-adjusted against that same league. dbWAR is our own open implementation — not fWAR or bWAR — and the full derivation, including its simplifications, is on the methodology page.