Article: Will Adjustment Lead To More Strikeouts For Glen Perkins?

[Parker Hageman]

In late June of last year, Minnesota Twins closer Glen Perkins decided to make a switch.

 

His strikeout rate had been falling since his peak in 2013 when he whiffed over 32 percent of the hitters he faced. Suddenly, he noticed hitters were not responding the same to his slider -- his go-to when he wants to miss a bat -- like they once did. From Perkins’ perspective, there was a “perceived lack of bite or spin” that prompted an evaluation of his premier pitch.

 

At that point in the season, Perkins was on-track for one of the best of his career and was a few weeks away from representing the Twins in his third straight All Star Game. He had converted 24 saves in as many opportunities. He held hitters to a tidy .217 average against. He had struck out 28 in 31.1 innings of work. For all intents and purposes, there was nothing wrong with his performance. Nevertheless, Perkins was not satisfied with his slider’s performance and decided to make an adjustment.

 

So on the night of June 30th, in a game at Cincinnati’s Great American Ballpark, Perkins introduced a new version of his slider.It seems bold for a closer -- the guy asked to preserve the win -- to try out new methods without at least giving it some time on the side first.

 

“I’m more of a ‘throw a pitch and see what happens’ and then react off a foul ball or a check swing or how he goes at it,” Perkins explains about his development process on the mound. “That gives me more of an idea then a pre-at bat plan of how I’m going to get this guy out. I want to throw a pitch and make a determination of what I’m going to do after that pitch.”

 

In the third at-bat of that outing, Perkins faced the Reds’ Joey Votto, a notoriously difficult out and one of the stingiest swingers in all of baseball. Perkins said the new slider passed his litmus test when he was able to get Votto to move his hands on a ball that dove down into the dirt. Votto did not commit to a swing but getting him to flinch was the baseball equivalent of convincing Donald Trump to admit he was wrong. Later that inning, Perkins put third baseman Todd Frazier away on a slider with strong downward action.

 

http://i.imgur.com/EHt0sim.gif

 

It may be hard to detect with the naked eye but his slider was moving differently. After the game Perkins tracked down Jack Goin, the Twins’ Manager of Major League Administration and Baseball Research, and had him confirm with Statcast data what Votto and Frazier’s reaction had told him -- the slider had a higher spin rate than before.

 

The combination of what he saw and what the numbers told him was enough for him to ditch his previous grip.

 

****

 

Perkins stresses that all he did was make a simple adjustment.

 

“The concept of the pitch is the same,” Perkins emphasized. “It’s not like I’m went out there and said ‘alright, now I’m going to throw a splitty’. I’ve thrown a slider for seven years and now I’m going to throw a split-finger. It’s just like how guys throw a changeup and they start to alter their changeup grip. I’ve moved the two-seamer around in my hand, I’ve tilted the four-seamer. It’s still the same pitch just holding it differently and hoping that a different grip on the ball gave it better results.”

 

That “different grip” came from what he saw from watching Francisco Liriano and Ervin Santana throw their sliders. For most of his career, Perkins says he used a grip resembling that of a standard curveball, placing his pointer and middle finger along the horseshoe of the seams. More recently however he felt that he wasn’t getting the necessary spin rate to fool hitters as consistently as he did in the past. “It was the lack of swings-and-misses, the chases, [the slider] just didn’t look as sharp as I wanted it to be,” he said. So Perkins turned to the grip that Liriano and Santana used -- throwing his two fingers across the seams and giving the digits a little daylight.

 

At 35.8 percent of his mix, no other starting pitcher has thrown their slider more frequently than Ervin Santana has over the last four years. And with good reason: Opponents struggled to barrel up the pitch that Perkins described as having “cutter-ish” movement with a very late, sharp break.

 

When asked what he felt made his slider special -- one that hitters have struggled against for multiple seasons -- Santana demurred. “It’s just a normal grip,” Santana said with a shrug. “I just try to snap it at the end, that’s it. No special move.”

 

Santana’s slider was actually a gift from his brother, who had taught him how to throw the pitch at a fairly young age. “I lost my curveball because of velocity so my brother taught me that grip for the slider and then after that…” Santana then gave a gesture that suggested everything after that was sunshine and lollipops from there on out.

 

While his end of the season results were stifled because of his back injury, Perkins felt like when he was healthy, his new slider moved similarly to Liriano’s -- or at least eliciting similar reactions from hitters.

 

“I would say they were pretty dang similar,” Perkins said of his new slider’s action. “Just judging on the swings that I’ve seen him get and the swings that I was getting I think they were pretty close.”

 

To claim that your pitch gets the same response as one of the game’s most dominating pitchers could be met with some skepticism but based on results Perkins was truly on to something.

 

Download attachment: Perkins_Slider.png

 

What’s more is that unlike the previous iteration, opponents were swinging and missing at a higher percentage of sliders inside the strike zone.

 

Download attachment: Perkins.png

 

The pitch, Perkins acknowledged, was far from the perfect weapon. The new grip gave the slider more vertical drop but there were times when he was unable to get the ball to stay down. Like the one he threw to future teammate John Ryan Murphy, which stayed up in the whomp ‘em zone and was promptly launched over the right field wall at Target Field.

 

http://i.imgur.com/IujNwyD.gif

 

After the switch, Perkins allowed another three home runs on the new slider. Some of that was due to issues with his neck and back but at other times his inability to properly locate the pitch.

 

****

 

Eddie Guardado, the current Twins bullpen coach and a former closer himself, understands exactly what Perkins is going through.

 

“I think you always got to make adjustments, right? This game is about adjustments,” Guardado said. “I’ve done it before. I’m sure a lot of guys have done it, just to see if we get a different angle, a different feel. [Perkins] worked on that last year. I noticed that the ball was going down a little bit more, which is good. Always down, always good, right? It’s coming along pretty good this year.”

 

As a survivor of 17 years in the big leagues, Guardado is no stranger to adjustments. In 2001, after a failed foray as a starter, Guardado was coming off several years of success as a late-innings reliever with the Twins. In 1999 Dick Such, the Twins pitching coach at the time, introduced him to the split-finger fastball grip in efforts to retire more right-handed hitters. From that point forward he threw a splitter in side sessions but lacked the necessary confidence to bring the pitch to the mound with him in a game situation. When the Twins fell out of the race that year, Guardado saw an opportunity to introduce his new pitch. He would go on to save 98 games for the Twins and strikeout 197 in 199.1 innings of relief before signing a three-year, $13 million contract with the Seattle Mariners heading into the 2004 season.

 

“Obviously you can’t be afraid, there’s no question,” Guardado said about the mindset a pitcher needs in order to bring a new pitch out to the mound. “Different grip, not knowing what’s gonna happen when I throw this pitch...but that’s why you work on it before you go out there. But still, when you go out there, you’re still not sure.”

 

Perkins says his experience differs from Guardado’s. First, Perkins says he wasn’t seeking out a new pitch, just to improve on an existing one.“I’m past trying to developed something for sustaining,” he said when discussing the possibility of adding a completely new pitch to his repertoire.

 

Second, his “new” slider did not get the same incubation process as Guardado’s splitter received. Perkins points out that once the season starts, those side sessions become a luxury for a closer. When he decided to flip the pitch, he was coming off a 15 appearances in the month of May, rarely getting the opportunity to work on things in between outings. Therefore the majority of his slider development came after long toss during pre-game warm-ups with former teammate Brian Duensing. Perkins fiddled with the pitch and, ultimately, he figured if it failed miserably he could always go back to his previous slider grip.

 

****

 

“I don’t like to go in there and fix a damn engine when you only need to change a spark plug,” Guardado said about his bullpen coaching philosophy. In many ways, that applies to what Perkins is going through at this stage in his career.

 

Yes, he has added more preventative maintenance, opting to spend the winter in Fort Myers and mixing in more strength training to his conditioning program (something he admitted was never a part of his offseason workouts before). This, he believes, will keep the engine running throughout the duration of the 2016 season.

 

In terms of on-field performance, Perkins is hoping that the on-the-fly tinkering with the slider will help him improve without a complete rebuild. He acknowledges his velocity is down from several years ago and does not expect to throw over 95 again in his career. Similar to the slider grip, he has played with a two-seam fastball all spring training to give hitters another look.

 

He’s not fixing the damn engine, simply making a few tweaks.

 

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[Thrylos]

So the though there is that a "fix" that Perkins introduced in the second half of last season, a period of 7.32 ERA, 6.69 FIP, 1.88 WHIP, and .356/.394/.674 opponent slash line, would actually help him in 2016?

 

Also, for some reason the data stop at Aug 17, covering 17 games with the "new and improved" slider, while Perkins appeared in 12 more in August, September, and October.  What does the data show about that slider in those games?  Was it better or worse?   Not sure why they were omitted from the story...

[Parker Hageman]

So the though there is that a "fix" that Perkins introduced in the second half of last season, a period of 7.32 ERA, 6.69 FIP, 1.88 WHIP, and .356/.394/.674 opponent slash line, would actually help him in 2016?

 

 

In the weeks leading up to his neck/back injuries, he increased his strikeout rate and swinging strike rate. The slider's spin rate increased. 

 

Also, for some reason the data stop at Aug 17, covering 17 games with the "new and improved" slider, while Perkins appeared in 12 more in August, September, and October.  What does the data show about that slider in those games?  Was it better or worse? Not sure why they were omitted from the story...

 

 

Nothing was omitted. The August 17th date was the day before he had his MRI. He said all his pitches were not responding the same after that point in the season. Data shows that in spin/location across the board. The data set is to show what he said he felt/saw on the mound, not a comprehensive study/comparison. 

[Nick Nelson]

Awesome writeup. I'll be watching the slider very closely early on. Guessing we'll see Perkins tonight for the first time one way or another.  

[bluechipper]

Hopefully the adjustment works, but I'm beginning to wonder if Perk is ever going to get a chance to protect a lead this season...

[Mike Sixel]

you can only use Perkins if there is a save situation.......right?

[Parker Hageman]

 

you can only use Perkins if there is a save situation.......right?

 

ONLY.

[Mike Sixel]

Zero appearances.

[alarp33]

Zero appearances.

It's too bad baseball has that rule that doesn't allow you to use your closer who hasn't pitched yet this year with a 1 run lead in the 8th, especially since a LH led off for the Royals

[Parker Hageman]

 

Zero appearances.

 

See above.

[Mr. Brooks]

It's not just Molitor, it's most managers so I won't single him out, but it boggles my mind that so many smart, experienced baseball people can find a way to justify saving your (theoretically) best reliever for a situation that may never, and often doesn't, occur.

[USAFChief]

If tonight is any indication, I'm fine with limiting Perkins' appearances.

 

Lets hope it wasn't any indication.

[USAFChief]

If tonight is any indication, I'm fine with limiting Perkins' appearances.

Lets hope it wasn't any indication.

Ahem.

[glunn]

If Perkins does not perform better soon then I believe that Jepsen should get a chance at being the closer.

[jimmer]

If Jepsen has to be our closer, we might as well truly give up on the season.

[alarp33]

"We all fall down"

[Thrylos]

 

If Perkins does not perform better soon then I believe that Jepsen should get a chance at being the closer.

 

I'd try May before Jepsen and even call JT Chargois before Jepsen if May fails.

 

Perkins should be the 7th inning guy, unless his FB gets to 94-95 and his SL to 84-85

[Primetime82]

Poor Glen. I told you all he was done being elite. Only the genius DaveW seen the writing on the wall. Father time get's us all. If only we had a GM/Manager that seen he was never going to recover to elite status.

 

 

[glunn]

I thought that Jepsen seemed competent in the closer role last year. I wonder how his closer stats stack up.