Discord in the clubhouse? Salvador Perez contradicts manager over day off

Batting averages have been down across baseball for a while now, but batting under .200 is still very bad. Having an OBP nearing that line would be enough to get most players benched. It’s not just those numbers that look bad, either.

Salvador Perez’s 2026 Baseball Savant bar lines, featuring a ton of blue

His bat speed and hard-hit rates are down. He’s always been known for chasing, but his chase rate is as high as its been since 2022 and 2023, when his numbers cratered for a while. Last year, it was often noted that while he was not an amazing hitter, his expected stats all suggested he was fairly unlucky. But this year, they paint a picture of a guy who would be a liability at the plate even if he was reaching them.

So, yeah, he probably deserved/needed a day off. But what the heck is going on?

In Salvy’s defense

Salvador Perez is a guy who allegedly offered to accept a trade in 2023 while the team struggled if the Royals could get significantly better by dealing him. He won the Roberto Clemente Award for exhibiting extraordinary character. He’s been the face of the franchise for more than a decade with his big smile and positive attitude. What do you have to do to upset a guy like that this much?

He’s obviously earned a lot of respect, not just in the Royals clubhouse, but around the entire league. And I just wrote last week about the importance of showing loyalty to veteran players. If he were given a day off without any discussion, that certainly wouldn’t seem to be a poor choice.

In Q’s defense

When Quatraro told Anne Rogers that Sal was struggling, that was simply and obviously factually correct. When he said that he was giving Sal a mental break, that was extremely standard and boilerplate language to describe giving a struggling guy a day off. If Sal took exception to it, it seems like the best way to handle that would have been in a private discussion, not a public argument. The only way in which Sal’s reaction to getting a single day off seems reasonable to me is if Quatraro has had a much worse handle on the clubhouse culture than we’ve been given any reason to believe. This is the first time there’s ever been any kind of public rumbling of discontent, and Quatraro just received a length extension as a show of faith from the front office and ownership.

It does lead me to wonder if the reason Sal continues to bat fourth even as it’s obvious to just about anyone that the team would be best served by him batting lower in the order is less about Quatraro being unwilling to make the move, as perhaps he has been afraid to upset the captain with such a demotion. But that would be an indictment of everyone involved.

Adding an extra wrinkle to all of this is the addition of Elias Díaz to the active roster, a transaction that was announced today.

The Royals were very clear entering the season that they didn’t think they needed a third catcher on the roster. Now, a day after giving Salvador Perez a day off, they add that third catcher? It could be a belief that Carter Jensen needs to play less often – he’s out of the lineup in favor of Díaz – but the timing is unfortunate, if so.

There is absolutely no way to know who is at fault in this situation, or if anyone is at fault, or if it is some combination of faults. But it’s an unfortunate distraction at a time when the team can seemingly least afford them as they try to find their way out of an early-season swoon that is rapidly exiting the realm of something that can be easily shaken off. Hopefully, everything is resolved quickly and amicably and the team can get back to winning, or we could all be in for a very, very long 2026 season.