Will Salvy break George Brett’s Royals career home run record?

The record has stood since 1993.

When George Brett retired in 1993, he did so with 317 career home runs, all of them coming in a Royals uniform. Brett was not the last of a dying breed—there have been other players, and some active ones, who have played their entire careers for just one organization, but it’s getting rarer.

One of those players is Salvador Perez.

With his home run yesterday, Perez now has 291 for his career. The 35-year-old has 18 for the year and there’s just under 60 games left in the season. The Royals hold a club option on Perez for next season that’s worth $13.5 million or they could decline it with a $2 million buyout.

The question, then, is this: will Salvador Perez break George Brett’s all-time Royals home run record?

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Royals and home runs don’t often go together. Aside from Brett and Perez, no player has even hit 200 career home runs as a Royal. Third on the team’s all-time list is Mike Sweeney with 197. Sweeney only added 18 to his total after leaving Kansas City.

Only two other Royals have even come close to that number: Amos Otis with 193 and Alex Gordon with 190.

Heck, only 16 players have even hit at least 100 homers for Kansas City. Bobby Witt Jr. is only four away from joining the club, but Member No. 18 is not close. Unless Jorge Soler returns and cranks out another 20, it’ll most likely be Vinnie Pasquantino, who’s 55% of the way there. Rather disheartening, the player after Vinnie is MJ Melendez.

The most home runs hit in an entire career by a player who hit at least one home run as part of the Royals belongs to Harmon Killebrew, who hit 573 in his Hall-of-Fame career. The overwhelmingly majority of those came as part of the Washington Senators/Minnesota Twins organization, but his final 14 came with the Royals back in 1975.

RVR Photos-Imagn Images

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More on Bobby Witt Jr.—he could very well break the record, despite who owns it at the time, if he players for the Royals for a dozen years. I figured that number rather crudely. At this point in time, he’s averaging 27.2 home runs per season. That number will rise, but for the sake of this article, let’s go with an even 27 since one cannot hit .2 of a home run. Regardless of whether the number remains 317, I imagine it will stick around there. As such, it will take Bob just over 11.5 seasons to break it.

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Soren Petro had The Athletic’s Keith Law on 810 the other evening to talk the Royals’ draft class. During his “final four” segment at the end of the interview, Petro asked Law how many career home runs he thinks Jac Caglianone finishes with.

Law said, “380.”

Clearly, if Cags hits all of those with the Royals, it would be [does math] more than 317.

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Back to the initial question:

When Salvador Perez finishes his Royals career, will he have broken George Brett’s record of 317 home runs?

I’m going to say...yes.

First, he’s hot right now, and I expect him to reach 300 by the end of the season. That would leave him 17 behind Brett.

Second, I believe the Royals truly want Perez to finish his career as a Royal. Which means that a) they won’t even approach him about waiving his 10-5 rights to accept a trade and b) they’ll pick up his option for next season.

Third, even though 2026 will be his age-36 season, I envision he’ll hit at least 23 home runs, which would put him past Brett. As of today, he’s hitting 28.6 home runs per 162 games.

It’ll be close. He might fall short. But I think Perez gets the record, which (hopefully) will be broken within the next 33 seasons, by either Bob or Cags or someone else.

For his final number, I’ll go with 323.

Now let’s see what you all think.