Salvador Perez voted 2021 All-Star Game starter

Kansas City Royals catcher Salvador Perez was announced as a starter for the 2021 All-Star Game. The game is at Coors Field in Denver on July 13th. He was the only Royal announced as an All-Star vote finalist last week.

This will be his seventh All-Star Game. He was in every year from 2013-2018. But then he missed the 2019 season with an injury and the 2020 game was canceled due to the pandemic.

Salvy is slashing .278/.306/.508 on the year with 19 home runs. He’s only 4th in fWAR for AL catchers with 1.6, but the leaderboard is not the prettiest for traditional metrics. The top three are all sporting batting averages near or below the Mendoza line: Mike Zunino (2.3 fWAR, .210), Sean Murphy (2.1, .217), and Yasmani Grandal (2.0, 1.86).

Next step? Last week, Ryan Heffernon advocated for him being in the Home Run Derby, too. It’s not crazy as he’s currently ninth in the league in home runs.

American League Starters

C Salvador Perez, KCR

1B Vladimir Guererro, Jr, TOR

2B Marcus Semien, TOR

SS Xander Bogaerts, BOS

3B Rafael Devers, BOS

OF Mike Trout, LAA

OF Aaron Judge, NYY

OF Teoscar Hernandez, TOR

DH Shohei Ohtani, LAA

National League Starters

C Buster Posey, SFG

1B Freddie Freeman, ATL

2B Adam Frazier, PIT

SS Fernando Tatis, Jr. SDP

3B Nolan Arenado, STL

OF Ronald Acuna, Jr., ATL

OF Nick Castellanos, CIN

OF Jesse Winkler, CIN