Luis Perdomo Dislikes Thrillers

Back in the early part of the summer I wrote about Padres’ long-man Luis Perdomo. To call him a mop-up man is being generous. His average leverage index is 0.26, which is almost half of the next lowest-leveraged reliever. The Padres really don’t want him pitching in games in which the outcome is up in the air. It’s like Kevin Towers issued Bud Black a simple set of guidelines called the Perdomo Principles with the following instructions:

1. Only use when the score is +/- 5 runs.
2. Follow the first point religiously.

So I did what any person desperately wanting to label a player as the human white flag does and created graphs showing the margin of lead based on when Perdomo enters the game:

For those who prefer their data in words, here is a breakdown of Perdomo’s usage:

32 appearances
1 appearance when the Padres held the lead
2 appearances when the Padres were tied
29 appearances when the Padres were trailing
5 appearances when the Padres were trailing by less than five runs
15 appearances when the Padres were trailing by five or six runs
9 appearances when the Padres were trailing by seven or more runs

While serving as the anti-Heath Bell, Perdomo has shown some ability to strike batters out (21%), generate groundballs (50.6%), and give up home runs (19.6% of total fly balls). His 93-94 MPH fastball actually holds a plus run value despite being used more than half of the time meanwhile his other main pitch — a slider that sits in the high 80s — does not hold that same distinction.

The Padres can’t be blamed for limiting his exposure. Perdomo spent about a minute in Triple-A earlier this season but otherwise made the jump to the bigs straight from Double-A. It would seem protecting Perdomo’s confidence level is the only reason the Padres haven’t dropped him in more of their games, seeing as how the results matter little at this point.