Indians: Cleveland made right call in declining Roberto Perez’s option

The Indians have declined Roberto Perez’s 2022 option.

If Roberto Perez does return to the Cleveland Indians/Guardians in 2022, it’ll be under a new deal as the Tribe have officially declined the veteran catcher’s 2022 option. The option-year was set for $7 million, a number the oft-injured and poor-hitting Perez far from deserved.

While a defensive dynamo behind the plate, the soon-to-be 33-year-old has never truly been a good offensive player. The career .206 hitter has only hit above .200 twice since 2016 and save for a career-year in 2019, has never truly been an offensive contributor.

That rarely mattered as Perez was always a great defensive player. That however is irrelevant when you usually play less than half of the games in a given year. Not counting the 2020 season, for obvious reasons, Perez has only ever played in 43% of the games.

Now, most of that was due to the fact that Yan Gomes was the starting catcher for the Indians, but he was the starting catcher because no one was good enough to unseat him. When Gomes left the team after 2018, Perez took over and had a career year. Then two straight seasons of injury-plagued baseball doomed him in.

That and his hitting completely fell apart.

Indians still have a desire to retain Roberto Perez

Offensively, Perez is as bad as they come. We’ve all seen it. The thing is, as bad as he is offensively, he’s also that good defensively. The Indians would like to bring him back, according to MLB.com’s Mandy Bell, but with Austin Hedges expected to get the starting call, and a potential cool $4 million in arbitration, the Indians would be paying over $10 million for two, sub-.200 hitters at one position.

That’s foolish.

The Tribe know this and want to make sure they don’t make that mistake. Bell also claims the Tribe is intent on spending money this offseason now that revenue has returned to normal. We’ve seen the Dolans drop big contracts before on guys like Nick Swisher, Michael Bourn, and Edwin Encarnacion and it appears the Tribe may be about to do something similar for 2022.

A big name that keeps getting mentioned a lot in getting a new deal is current Tribe third basemen, Jose Ramirez. The Tribe picked up his 2022 option and there is a lot of talk of getting a deal done.

The Indians could be a big hit in 2022 if they do in fact step up, retain Ramirez and pursue some fairly priced free agents. Assuming the collective bargaining agreement gets worked out.