Glen Perkins Struggles To Start Season's Second Half

Perkins had been as close to perfect as a closer could be in the first half of the 2015 season. While his strikeout rate was not otherworldly, Perkins managed to do the three things pitchers can control in order to reduce the numbers of runs: don’t walk anyone (5 walks in 37.1 innings), don’t allow home runs (two home runs) and pile up strikeouts (36 in 37.1 innings). When balls were put into play, his defense helped him along as he stranded 92% of all runners that reached.

And just reaching base was very hard against Perkins. Among all closers in the first half, his 0.83 walks plus hits in innings pitched (WHIP) was on the lower end of the spectrum, meaning he did not allow many base-runners in critical situations. In fact, his command was so good that is was not until his 20th appearance of the season when he walked his first batter -- an act that he confessed was somewhat intentional.

Perkins’ first walk of the season came against Pittsburgh’s Jung Ho Kang which Perkins said afterward that he had intentionally unintentionally walked the Pirates’ infielder in order to gain the more favorable lefty-on-lefty matchup with Pedro Alvarez whom Perkins promptly struck out to end the night.

“That was Jung Ho Kang who went 3-and-0 and we had a 3-run lead so I wanted to go ahead and take my chances with the next guy,” Perkins told the national Fox audience during the Twins and Tigers series. “So I was going to pitch around him and try to get the lefty and take it from there.”

On Tuesday night, Perkins had a similar decision to make against Kang again. He could have pitched around him to get to the left-handed hitting Alvarez but with one out and no one on, he decided to go after the rookie shortstop. After retiring Aramis Ramirez on a liner to Trevor Plouffe, Perkins got ahead of Kang with three straight fastballs which were all 95 miles per hour. With the count in his favor, Perkins opted to throw a slider. Instead of the nasty bite that viewers have come to expect, it hung in the bottom third of the zone long enough for Kang to drive it into the second deck and unknot the game.

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This probably is not an alarming trend but more of a curiosity, but Glen Perkins has started the second half missing his spots with his slider.

Last season before Perkins was eventually sidelined, it was because of the closer said he lacked feeling in his arm to finish pitches. When he turned to his slider, it remained up in the zone. Perkins threw 107 sliders among all his pitches and wound up allowing eight hits including three home runs. The usually trustworthy bat-missing pitch was suddenly elevated more frequently.

“You can’t finish a pitch,” Perkins said this spring about his struggles in the second half. “I would try to throw a slider I just couldn’t get the last little bit of the whip. You don’t have the spin. So you lose movement, you lose the life. The life and movement is the spin. Guy with late life spins the ball faster than a guy without late life.”

So far in the second half of this season, Perkins is showing a big similarity between his slider at the end of last year and the beginning of this season’s second half. He has thrown it 28 times and it has been put into play hard resulting in five hits -- two of which have resulted in home runs.

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After striking out 36 of 143 batters faced in the first half of the season, Perkins has struck out just one of the 28 he has encountered to start the second half. Hitters have attacked earlier in the count and put more in play but not having the driving slider seems to allow for more contact.

Does this ominous start to the second half signal another injury-fueled decline ahead for the Twins closer? So far, Perkins has not said he has any arm issues whatsoever but not locating his slider as effectively as he has in the past must be a valid concern. As a two-pitch pitcher, Perkins relies heavily on being able to change eye-level with his fastball traveling north and his slider heading south.

For the Twins, the hope is that Perkins is only experiencing one of those rough patches all pitchers eventually encounter during the dregs of the season in which they simply do not have their best stuff every night.