Former key Royals catcher is bowing out of big league baseball

It may seem strange to claim that someone whose tenure with a bad, non-contending team lasted less than four months still played a key role for that club. But that's precisely what Martín Maldonado did in his short 2019 stay with the 103-loss Kansas City Royals.

That KC season began without Salvador Perez. Coming off his sixth-straight All-Star campaign during which he slugged a career-high-tying 27 homers and matched another career-best by driving in 80 runs, Perez suffered a torn UCL in spring training. The injury knocked him out for the season and left the Royals without a frontline starting catcher.

Enter Maldonado, a veteran major leaguer who was still searching for employment on the free agent market. The Royals snatched him up, put him behind the plate as their starting backstop, and he lasted until they traded him to the Cubs during the midsummer trade deadline period. Maldonado ended up in the World Series that year (more on that in a moment), and caught in another six big league campaigns.

Now, though, his playing days are over. As we recently speculated he might, Maldonado is retiring. Per MLB Trade Rumors, he revealed his decision to bow out in a Saturday morning Instagram post.

Martín Maldonado helped the Royals in an hour of big need

To say Perez's UCL tear and subsequent corrective Tommy John Surgery left the Royals shorthanded behind the plate understates the situation. Defensively and offensively, Perez had become one of the best catchers in the game after breaking in with KC in 2011, and was one of the lone bright spots on a team that hadn't played a postseason game since winning the 1985 World Series.

Yes, the Royals were blessed at the time with Cam Gallagher and Meibrys Viloria, both decent but inexperienced catchers — Gallagher had 35 big league games under his belt, while Viloria had 10. With Perez clearly out for the year, the Royals needed a veteran to fill in.

And they found that veteran in Maldonado, who was, a bit surprisingly, available. The then-eight-year major league veteran's reputation as a good defensive catcher was well established — he won a Gold Glove with the Angels in 2017 — and he helped Houston get to the American League Championship Series just the season before. Kansas City signed him to a one-year, $2.5 million deal in early March; he was clearly the Royals' No. 1 catcher as soon as he arrived in their Surprise, Arizona, training camp.

The move paid off. Maldonado didn't disappoint defensively — appearing behind the plate in 73 of the 74 games he played for the Royals, he threw out a third of the runners who tried to steal with him in the game and gave the club above-league average defense. His .227/.291/.366 batting line certainly wasn't spectacular, but the Royals picked him up for his catching skills, not his bat.

But with losses piling up (KC finished with 103) and the Royals harboring no hope of reaching the playoffs, Maldonado became a logical trade chip, and the club dealt him to the Cubs in a mid-July swap that brought pitcher Mike Montgomery to Kansas City.

The move proved better for Maldonado than Montgomery — Montgomery went 2-7 in 13 down-the-stretch starts for the Royals and pitched only three times for them in 2020, while the Cubs waited just 16 days before trading Maldonado to Houston, where he again became a regular and postseason fixture behind the plate.

Maldonado helped the Astros to the World Series three times, including in 2022 when they won it all. He moved to the White Sox as a free agent in 2024, then played 64 times for San Diego this season. He finished his career as a member of the Padres' National League Wild Card roster, but didn't play in the series they lost 2-1 to the Cubs.

What lies ahead for Maldonado in his post-playing career remains to be seen. But Royals fans should remember him as a valuable, although short-term, replacement for injured star Salvador Perez.