What caused Salvador Perez's slow April start, and how can he get back into gear?

It’s a true treat in baseball when a star player is able to play for the franchise that drafted or signed them, and luckily for Kansas City Royals fans, they’ve been able to experience this with catcher Salvador Perez. While Perez hasn’t been one of baseball's biggest stars (save for the 48-HR campaign in 2021), Perez has been a constant in the Royals lineup; earning 9 All-Star appearances in the process.

Perez’s campaign is not off to a particularly hot start at the beginning of the year, a .235/.279/.374 April slash line is certainly an uglier look, and fans may be wondering if father time has finally caught up to the lovable slugger.

So, what’s up with Perez? Is it father time? Can he turn it around? What do the numbers tell us? 

What's caused Salvador Perez's slow April start?

For Royals fans, there’s good news and bad news. Let’s start with the bad news: Perez is not hitting well, and since he doesn’t offer much outside of getting extra base hits and home runs, he’s hurting the team. We can see his negative impact in his -0.1 bWAR in the first month of the season. Objectively, Perez has not played well. But wait! You said there was good news! What’s the good news? 

Perez’s underlying numbers indicate that he’s still hitting the ball as hard as he always has. He is still barreling up baseballs and hitting them hard, and he still is great at finding the right launch angle to send baseballs over the stands. Most of his underlying numbers have remained the same as last year, and they’re borderline elite. For comparison, take a look at Perez’s stat page from Baseball Savant compared to Aaron Judge's page. 

Obviously, Perez is not a hitter on the level of Aaron Judge, but it’s helpful to look at their charts just to show how impressive of a hitter Perez SHOULD be. Baseball Savant expects Perez to be hitting .309 (as of April 30) just based on the batted ball profile. So, why exactly is Perez not hitting well? Why has he been a negative player? The answer lies in how he’s been pitched and how he’s hit the pitches that he sees. 

Pitchers like to throw Perez down and away, and that makes sense. His profile suggests a hitter that swings away (high chase rate, high whiff rate, middle of the pack strikeout rate), and the best way to attack someone who hits in that way is to just pound them low and away with breaking balls. This is how he’s always been pitched, and the chart below shows that’s still the case in 2025. It’s the book on him at this point, and if he’s going to keep swinging at those pitches, pitchers should keep throwing it there. Shown below are the total number of pitches per zone, with 2025 on the left and 2024 on the right.

So, he’s being pitched essentially the same way he always has been. The difference lies in how he’s performing against these types of pitches. Historically, Perez has actually hit quite well on these low and away pitches. This year, however, he is really struggling to make an impact. Just take a look at the difference in batting average on this particular part of the zone between 2025 and 2024. 

That’s brutal! But, as said above, he’s historically been much better at hitting these low and away pitches. So, what’s the difference, why is he not hitting these pitches better, and what has he done in the past that helped him hit that spot of the zone more consistently? The answer: launch angle. Specifically, his launch angle in that zone has increased to 29 degrees, while the last three seasons his launch angle has been around either 16 or 20. It's especially high against breaking balls, a super high 45 degrees.

What does launch angle have to do with this? Well, Baseball Savant describes the ideal launch angle to be between 8 and 32 degrees, these are the conditions best made for line drives and homeruns, your hardest hit baseballs. Perez is currently lifting the ball in that spot of the zone instead of driving the ball, driving down his value as a hitter because he isn’t getting on base either. 

What can Perez do to remedy this situation? There are two options.

One, Perez could get back to lowering his launch angle on balls down and away and focusing on driving them the other way instead of trying to hit them in the air. Perhaps he is pressing a bit due to his low homerun totals and is trying to make up for it by lifting the ball more than normal.

Or, Perez could work on his plate discipline and change his approach; instead of trying to hit balls down and away Perez could lay off of them and try to work more walks. However, due to Perez’s historic lack of high walk rate, this may be a skill that isn’t necessarily in his bag and he should focus on fixing his ability to hit those pitches. After all, he has shown an ability to be quite good at hitting those types of pitches. 

So, Salvador Perez is struggling, but it doesn’t mean he can’t turn it around. Pitchers love to throw him the ball low and away, and he currently isn’t hitting those pitches because he’s trying to lift them too much. However, he has shown in the past that he can be good against those pitches, so Royals fans shouldn’t be too worried about his immediate future; he’s probably just going through a funk launch angle-wise that can be corrected. And after all this past week he's already showed signs of improvement, slashing .435/.498/.696 from April 24 to April 30.

While the focus at the moment will be determining how serious his current hip issue is that forced him out of Thursday's game, it's comforting to know at least he's showed those signs of improvement beforehand.

So keep the faith, Royals fans! Perez isn’t washed yet.