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Game 59: Baltimore at Minnesota

Daniel Cabrera vs Glen Perkins

Cabrera has somehow morphed himself into a near identical clone of Carlos Silva (circa 2005), with the notable absence of Silva's ability to throw strikes.

Note that this has not always been the case. In fact, when Cabrera came up, you'd be hard-pressed to find a pitcher more different than Carlos Silva. Cabrera threw hard (really hard) and also threw a ton of sliders with some curveballs mixed in. He also missed a ton of bats, and wasn't much of a ground ball pitcher.

According to fangraphs, Cabrera's fastball velocity has come down from 96.2 in 2005 to 93.0 in 2008. Cabrera's just 27, so this troubled me a bit at first. Is he injured? Then I noticed that he's getting more ground balls than he used to (53.9% GB% would be his career high in GB%). And typically a pitcher's 2-seam fast ball is 3-4 mph slower than his 4-seam fastball.

So I did a bit of googling, and apparently starting last year, Cabrera developed his two-seamer and started throwing it more. Now, it's to the point that Cabrera throws 87.5% fastballs.

87.5%!!!

It's absolutely crazy for a starting pitcher to throw any one pitch that often. Hell, it's pretty crazy for a relief pitcher to throw a pitch that often. Even in Silva's best season, where he essentially just threw the two-seamer, he threw 83.9% fastballs at about 92.1 mph. Cabrera's throwing his fastball even more often than Silva was. Astounding.

I'll sometimes say that someone like Nick Blackburn is like Carlos Silva, but that's more in terms of results like getting ground balls and limiting walks. But looking at Blackburn's pitch types (check the bottom of his fangraphs page), he has really mixed up his pitches--basically 50% fastball, 29% cutter, 11% curveball, 9% change, and a handful of sliders. So in a way, he's much, much different than Silva was. But Cabrera is essentially following Silva's plan, though he does lack Silva's control.

What happens to a guy who throws two-seam fastballs almost exclusively but walks 3.6 batters per game and strikes out 4.9 batters per game? I don't really know, but the Orioles are going to find out.

Meanwhile, Perkins' peripherals are kind of wacky right now--low K/9, low BB/9, ridiculously high LD%, lots of pop ups, barely any ground balls--so I don't really know what to make of his performance-to-date. As such, I'm sticking with my preseason thoughts (and the projections) that eventually he's not going to be much better than replacement level. We'll see.

This entry was posted by ubelmann on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 5:30 pm and is filed under 2008 Twins Game Logs. It is one of 821 entries by the author. We are no longer accepting Letters to the Editor on this post.

340 LTEs so far