Perkins Features Good Movement As Twins Take Series From Royals

Whew that was a long title. Perkins gave up 10 hits today in 7 IP and only struck out 1 batter, but he got a lot of groundballs (17) and didn’t walk anyone to allow the Twins to get the victory. Twins pitchers are going to give up a lot of hits on groundballs having Brendan Harris at short, but as the old adage goes, it’s tough to hit a ground ball over the fence. So how was Perkins able to get so many ground balls this outing, when he is decidedly a flyball pitcher?

That is Perkins’s movement on all his pitches. Notice it breaks in to lefties. The average, according to Josh Kalk’s pitch f/x tool is 5.96 inches.  Here’s his graph today:

That plot is a little tough to see, but basically Perkins got a lot more movement on his fastball (well all his pitches really), but his fastball especially. He did sacrifice some vertical movement, which is interesting that it led to more grounders, but the horizontal movement definitely led to a lack of hard hit balls.

The Twins have an off day tomorrow before a big 3 game set with Detroit. I’ll have a post tomorrow, and some links for your weekend reading.

Go Twins and (today, anyways) Go A’s.