How Salvador Perez stole the show for the KC Royals Monday

I cringed the other day watching KC Royals living legend Salvador Perez chug into second base with a double that looked like a single he should have just let be. At the time, the game against Philadelphia was over for all practical purposes and ended up being one of two weekend contests Kansas City dropped in shockingly lopsided fashion.

What bothered me was the apparent check Perez gave his hamstring after he reached second; such touches often signal a problem, and too frequently a trip to the Injured List.

Dark thoughts of Salvy headed to the IL crept into my head. I knew full well the disastrous effect such a blow could deal the team as it fights for its first postseason trip since 2015.

Fortunately, my worries, and I'm sure those of others, disappeared when it became clear Perez was, and would be, OK. And for so many reasons, that's a great thing — had the situation been otherwise, we wouldn't have been privileged to witness what the inimitable Perez did to Cleveland Monday.

Salvador Perez had a huge Monday for the KC Royals

The stage on which Perez performed Monday magic was the biggest of baseball's day, the spotlight attraction in the game's closest division race. With a split doubleheader in Cleveland on tap, the Royals began their day in a second-place tie with Minnesota in the American League Central, with both clubs trailing the first-place Guardians by only three games.

Most observers probably believed it was the perfect opportunity for the Guardians to widen the gap, especially against the Royals who arrived in Cleveland Sunday night carrying the pain of losing badly to the Phillies Saturday and Sunday, embarrassing defeats that got Kansas City off to a shaky start to their 20 straight battles with contending teams.

But Cleveland, a team arguably losing its season-long grip on the Central, squandered that opportunity, and Perez had much to do with it.

Take the day's first game. Perez, who at 34 has far less career ahead of him than he's put behind him and refuses to give even an inch to Father Time as he enjoys one of the best big league seasons he's ever had, went 3-for-3 with a pair of doubles, a single, and a walk, didn't strike out, and scored one of the four Royal runs that allowed the club to slip by the Guardians 4-3.

But as good as he was in the opener, Perez was even better in the nightcap.

It started innocently when he walked in the first.

But in the third, with the Royals down 3-1, he drove in a run on a groundout. It wouldn't be his last RBI.

With one out in the fifth, he broke a 4-4 tie with a solo homer to left-center that left him one short of 25 for the season, and three short of tying the second-best single-season mark of his career.

He didn't have to wait long for No. 25 ... and it was grand. Just an inning later, Perez homered with the bases loaded to extend the Royals' lead to five at 9-4. And that's where the score stayed.

Perez struck out in the eighth, but by then his work was done. He finished the nightcap 2-for-4 with six RBI. For the day, he was 5-for-7, drove in six runs (a career high), and had those two homers and two doubles. He's now slashing .282/.341/.494, his 94 RBI tie him with Bobby Witt Jr. for the second-most on the club (Vinnie Pasquantino has 96), and he trails Witt by two for the team home run lead.

And Perez's pair of nightcap homers marked his 17th career multi-homer game and tied him with George Brett for the most in team history; his sixth career grand slam tied him with Frank White for the most of any Royal.

There were plenty of other commendable Kansas City performances Monday — MJ Melendez, who's turning things around at the plate, hit his 17th homer of the season, and second in as many days, in the first game, and went 3-for-5 in the second; Maikel Garcia had three hits in the second game; the bullpen was charged with only one run in 9.1 innings; and Daniel Lynch IV, just recalled from Triple-A Omaha in the morning, finished off the Guardians in the nightcap with three scoreless, one-hit innings to earn his first big league save.

But at the end of the day, it was Perez who shined above all others for the Royals, whonow have second place all to themselves, and enjoy a 1.5-game lead over the Twins for the second AL Wild Card and a 6.5-game lead over Boston for the third.

What a day it was for Perez. And the Royals.

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