Salvador Perez is a baseball player who plays for the Kansas City Royals as a catcher. Perez has been playing for the royals from the lower leagues since 2007. He was called to the Major League in 2011 and has remained on the team since winning the World Series Most Valuable Player Award in 2015 after the Royals beat the New York Mets and won this year’s World Series. The Venezuelan player has also won the MLB All-Star six times and the Gold Glove Awards four times. Learn more about other things he has won with the diamond in his family life, his finances, and other interesting facts.
Salvador Perez Bio, Age
Salvador was born on May 10, 1990, in Valencia, Carabobo, Venezuela, as Salvador Johan Pérez Diaz. He was raised alone by his mother Yilda Diaz after his father left home at the age of only four years and never returned. When Perez was eight years old, he and his mother moved in with his maternal grandmother, Carmen de Diaz.
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To feed herself, her son and her mother, Yilda made and sold cakes, pies, and lasagna; and to keep her son busy, she enrolled Salvador in a baseball school in Valencia, as he has shown the ability to catch, throw and hit balls since the age of six. His skills were developed at school, and at the age of fourteen, he decided to play baseball professionally as a catcher. He grew up playing with and against today’s MLB player and fellow countryman José Altuve.
Career
At the age of sixteen, he was signed by the Kansas City Royals for $65,000. The following season (2007) he started his career in the Minor League with the Arizona Rookie League. In August 2011, Salvador Perez moved up to the premier league, and in his first game as an MLB player, he scored his first goal, scored 2 baserunners, and caught 5 pop-ups – two unusual events for the team this season.
In the same month (August), Perez scored his first home run against Max Scherzer, in which game he was just a triple goal away from scoring for the cycle. By the end of his rookie season, he had played a total of thirty-nine games and recorded .331 with 3 HRs and twenty-one run-ins.
In 2012, he signed a $7 million contract with the team that was extended for 5 years. Although he suffered a torn meniscus in his left knee during a training game in the spring, Perez still played seventy-nine games this year and finished the season with 0.301 goals, eleven home runs, and 39 RBIs. The following year, he played one hundred and thirty-eight games with an average of 0.292 hits, thirteen home runs, and 79 RBIs.
After a very impressive 2014 season, in which he had more starts than any other catcher in the league, Perez was nominated for the 2015 All-Star Game, which was his third All-Star appearance. That same season, he beat .364 in the 2015 World Series, helping the Royals to five wins and would later emerge as the 2015 World Series winner. Salvador Perez was unanimously named this season’s most valuable player in the World Series, making him the first catcher to take home the award since 1992 and the second player of Venezuelan descent to be named MVP. In the same year, he won the Gold Glove Award for the third year in a row.
The following year (2016), Perez signed another contract extension with the franchise that will keep him on the team until 2021. In 2016, he won his fifth All-Star Game title as a Starting Catcher for the American League and his fourth Gold Glove Award. Gold Glove Award. He finished the season with twenty-two home runs, more than any other catcher in the American League. In 2018 he was named All-Star of the MLB.
Salvador Perez – Married, Wife, Son, Family
The royal believer is not married, but he has a girlfriend named Marig Ruiz. The player has two sons, Salvador Jr. and Johan Salvador Perez, whom he welcomed with his girlfriend in 2017.
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His Salary
Salvador Perez signed (2012) a five-year contract extension with the team worth $7 million, the contract included three club options that covered his seasons before the arbitration.
With the contract extension provision, his salary was USD 1.75 million in 2012, USD 1 million in 2013, USD 1.5 million in 2014, USD 1.75 million in 2015, and USD 2 million in 2016, USD 3.75 million in 2017, and USD 5 million in 2018. In 2019 it will earn $6 million.
His Height and Body Measurements
The catcher of the royal stands at a height of 1.92 m (6 ft 3 in) and weighs 111 kg (245 lb). Details of his other body measurements are not yet confirmed.