{"id":678780,"date":"2026-04-19T01:21:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T01:21:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/678780\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T01:21:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T01:21:20","slug":"royals-to-select-contract-of-elias-diaz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/678780\/","title":{"rendered":"Royals To Select Contract Of Elias D\u00edaz"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Royals are planning to call up catcher Elias D\u00edaz<\/a> from Triple-A, reports Daniel \u00c1lvarez-Montes of El Extrabase<\/a>. The ACES client is not on the 40-man roster, so a corresponding move will be needed.<\/p>\n

D\u00edaz, 35, signed a minor-league deal with Kansas City in late February and was invited to big-league Spring Training. While he batted .533\/.533\/.800 in six games there, he was mostly signed for depth given the presence of Salvador Perez<\/a> and Carter Jensen<\/a>. Starting the year at the Royals\u2019 top affiliate, D\u00edaz has so far batted .226\/.294\/.258 in 34 plate appearances. That\u2019s admittedly a small sample, but it\u2019s still pretty weak production even for the light-hitting veteran.<\/p>\n

Instead, D\u00edaz\u2019s promotion could be about giving Perez a chance to rest and reset. Now in his age-36 season, the Royals\u2019 captain has gotten out to a brutal start at the plate. In 81 PA across his first 20 games, Perez has batted just .160\/.210\/.307, which amounts to a meager 36 wRC+. His walk rate has mostly held constant from 2025, while his 21.0% strikeout rate is only a slight increase. Instead, Perez\u2019s downturn has resulted from a drop in power as well as unusually poor batted-ball luck. He posted a .209 isolated slugging percentage last year, but that has fallen to .147 so far in 2026. Of greater note is that Perez is batting just .161 on balls in play, which would easily be the worst mark of his career.<\/p>\n

A look at Perez\u2019s batted ball metrics offer some explanation. His average exit velocity has declined to 89.0 MPH, continuing a year-over-year decline since the 2024 season. Meanwhile, his soft and hard contact percentages have both trended in the wrong direction by about 7%. Obviously, it\u2019s hard to draw conclusions from only 20 games\u2019 worth of data, but the bottom line is that Perez has been a liability in the Royals\u2019 offense to start the year. That led manager Matt Quatraro to give Perez a \u201cmental breather\u201d against the Yankees today by withholding him from the starting lineup (link via Anne Rogers of MLB.com<\/a>). Perez ultimately did not play in the game, which the Royals lost 13-4.<\/p>\n

The fact that the Royals are bringing up D\u00edaz despite his own lack of offense could signal a few more days off for Perez. In that scenario, the Royals would turn to Jensen as the starting catcher, with D\u00edaz as the temporary backup. Jensen has a 97 wRC+ in 19 games as a DH and backup catcher to Perez. That\u2019s a step down from the 159 wRC+ he posted last year, although that was also in a small sample of 69 PA. Nonetheless, Jensen has continued to hit for power, and his overall output is roughly average for catchers, so it makes sense to give him more playing time for now.<\/p>\n

More to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Royals are planning to call up catcher Elias D\u00edaz from Triple-A, reports Daniel \u00c1lvarez-Montes of El Extrabase.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":678781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,4703],"class_list":{"0":"post-678780","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baseball","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-elias-diaz"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116428753063275267","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=678780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/678781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}