Glen Perkins
Ask any Twins’ fan and they will certainly tell you that they are glad that Glen Perkins is on their team. Through Perkin’s first three starts this season, he has pitched a total of 24 innings – 8 innings per trip to the rubber – and has allowed just four opposing runners to cross the plate. Any time a pitcher can go a full eight innings is a great outing, but Perkins being able to do so three times in a row brings forth a simple question: “How?”
The real answer is: I haven’t the foggiest idea. If I did, I would probably be in a minor league organization somewhere and you couldn’t buy the secret off me. For us mere mortals, however, we can simply take a look at Perkin’s hard data and most likely walk away more puzzled than ever on how Perkins is so great.
On Sunday Perkins strung eight nearly perfect innings together, only getting roughed up a bit in the second inning; where the Angels struck first by scoring a run on a groundout. That inning was one of the toughest for him; 12 whole pitches. Here is a look at his inning-by-inning pitch breakdown, complete with a running total.
1st - 11 pitches; 11 total
2nd – 12 pitches; 23 total
3rd - 14 pitches; 37 total
4th - 8 pitches; 45 total
5th – 9 pitches; 54 total
6th - 9 pitches; 63 total
7th - 11 pitches; 74 total
8th - 10 pitches; 84 total
84 total pitches; nothing more than a long bullpen session… a light workout. He had four one-two-three innings, not including the double-play-aided third inning, but had no lucky break where under five pitches were required to retire three batters. After getting through the order once while surrendering two hits and walking one, Perkins settled down and went the remaining five innings while allowing only two hits.
There was a scare in the seventh inning when Bobby Abreu grounded out sharply to Perkins, who promptly chucked the ball to Morneau. But not before getting nailed with what the AP recap called a “blistering comebacker.” Perkins walked around the mound, successfully convinced the coaching staff that he was fine after a series of warm-up pitches, and finished off the remaining two innings by pitching through pain.
Here is a velocity histogram, courtesy of BrooksBaseball.net.
As you can see, Perkins’ arm didn’t break down in his start against the Angels. His pitches were relatively consistent throughout the afternoon, and no significant drop in velocity can be seen. Although MLB Gameday labeled a few of Perkins’ pitches as sinkers/sliders, I think it’s safe to say that he relied almost exclusively on that deadly fastball/changeup duo. As evidenced by the chart above, Perkins obviously had a few slow fastballs and a few fast changeups, but you’re going to see that in almost every start.
This next histogram shows the average speed of Perkin’s pitches.
The highest frequency is right around 89 mph. Perkins threw more fastballs than changeups, and his average fastball comes in near the upper 80s, but he can touch 90 or 91 from time to time. His changeup, or “sinker” as Gameday labels it, comes in around 79-81 mph.
So, from all this information what do we know now about Perkins that we didn’t know before? I’ll let you be the judge of that.
For now, I’m content to be simply amazed in Glen Perkins.