Kansas City Royals catcher Salvador Perez set a career high with 21 home runs last season while driving in 70 runs and topping 500 at-bats (531) for the second straight season. He has become an asset to fantasy baseball owners over the last three seasons, with at least 70 RBIs in all three campaigns and a boost in home runs that has offset a drop in batting average (.260 in 2015).

Perez’s high contact rate (85 percent in 2015) gives him a solid batting average floor, but rarely taking a walk (13 last season) led to a career-worst .280 on-base percentage last year. The fortune that worked in his favor in 2013 (.311 BABIP), leading to a .292 average, has disappeared over the last two seasons (.278 BABIP in 2014, .270 BABIP in 2015) and taken his batting average down with it.

The grind of catching seemed to wear Perez down last year, with an OPS of just .510 against left-handed pitching after the actual halfway point of the season. His home run/fly ball rate (10 percent) also fell during that time frame after being 15 percent before that point, so Perez’s power upside looks tenuous heading into 2016.

Per FanGraphs.com, Perez’s “hard contact” rate fell from 31 percent in 2014 to 24.3 percent last season. That is not a substantial red flag, since his rate of “medium contact” climbed nearly 10 percent to 55.9, but it does help explain the extremely low BABIP he posted in 2015.

Last season’s drop in hard contact rate and a spike in overall home run/fly ball rate (12 percent) makes Perez unlikely to reach or top 20 home runs this year. Better luck should bring his batting average up a bit, but expecting much more than a .270 mark is pushing it.

Being part of a solid lineup works in his favor, so based on the assumption he plays 150 games or so, Perez should do enough to be a solid contributor for fantasy owners this year. He’s also not at an age (26 in May) where catchers tend to decline, which surely drove the Royals’ decision to give Perez a five-year, $52.5 million contract extension this past week.

But that does not mean there aren’t signs of a looming drop-off for Perez, and we’ve seen catchers of similar physical build (6-foot-3, 240 pounds) decline quickly offensively due to the extra beating they take behind the plate. The Royals chose to make a significant investment in the 2015 World Series MVP beyond the coming season, but fantasy owners should see enough bust potential to get ahead of the curve and pass on a similar opportunity this year.