Written By Brandon Warne
It’s not terribly surprising that Mike Pelfrey’s very public admission that he’s upset he didn’t make the Minnesota Twins rotation struck a nerve among local fans. It’s completely fair to give Pelfrey credit for gutting out 2013 just a year removed from Tommy John surgery, but after a cataclysmic 2014 season which saw the club get virtually nothing back from a $5.5 million investment, it’s easy to see why the team holds the cards.
Pelfrey pulled back from those comments in a subsequent chat with Mike Berardino of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and said he was ready to go to the bullpen and “figure this thing out.” That’s a good thing, considering there probably wouldn’t be many takers for Pelfrey’s second season at the same salary — an amount the Twins would most likely be all too happy to shed. But at the same time, a deal they simply could have never handed out — but I digress.
In a conversation with Pelfrey for a publication elsewhere at the end of the 2013 season — with free agency looming for the big right-hander — I asked if he’d be willing to sign as a reliever. I had kicked around some of his underlying numbers and thought it might be a good move for him. He said he preferred to sign as a starter, but conceded, “Ultimately, in the end if that’s what I have to do, then that’s what I have to do.”
Some 18 months later, Pelfrey has been forced to bite that bullet.
Most likely the main reason Pelfrey doesn’t want to go down that road is for financial reasons. Back-end starters have longer careers and make more money than middle relievers in most cases. Now there are rare exceptions, but some of those include guys signed as starters making that kind of money after moving to the bullpen, like Kansas City’s Wade Davis.
Davis is a name that has come up in the tea leaves quite frequently as a possible comp for Pelfrey’s move to the bullpen. Davis, like Pelfrey, was nothing particularly interesting as a starter — 5.32 ERA, 7.6 K/9, 1.68 WHIP in 31 games (24 starts) in 2013 — but found amazing success last year in the Royals bullpen. Davis made 71 appearances last year and posted a 1.00 ERA (eight earned runs in 72 innings) while striking out 109 batters (13.6 K/9) and not allowing a single home run.
But here’s the rub: those numbers made Davis among the two or three most valuable relievers in the entire game. Isn’t that a lot to expect from Pelfrey, who has never come close to Davis’ strikeout rates as a starter? If it was that easy, wouldn’t someone have made this move with Pelfrey by now?
It’s hard to say.
But that isn’t to suggest that Pelfrey won’t take to the role with aplomb. Provided he physically can get ready to handle multiple days in a row — something Kevin Slowey struggled with before his fallout with the team — there’s ample reason to believe he can be an asset for a squad that desperately needs improvement from its relief corps.
For me, a Luke Hochevar comp — Davis’ teammate in Kansas City who missed last year with Tommy John surgery — is a bit more apt for Pelfrey. Like Pelfrey, Hochevar was a first-round pick out of college who was expected to become an ace on the fast-track to the major leagues. In fact, Hochevar was taken first overall in 2006; Pelfrey was the No. 9 pick the year before.
Neither pitcher ever really made good on that potential, hanging around 5.0-6.0 K/9 with mediocre ERA figures but solid groundball rates. Hochevar made the move to the bullpen in 2013, posting a 1.92 ERA, 10.5 K/9 and a ridiculous 0.82 WHIP. Some of it was BABIP-luck driven, but here was a guy who was routinely throwing between 91-93 mph on average dialing it up to 95.5 while hardly throwing anything besides that fastball and a cutter.
Pelfrey’s average fastball has been in the 92 mph range his entire career, save for brief hiccups where he either got hurt (2014, 2012) or was a fresh-faced rookie making just a handful of appearances (2006).
As we have seen just on this current team, plenty of velocity can be added when a workload is reduced significantly. Glen Perkins came within a late-spring bus ride of not making the club in 2011. Perkins, a 2004 first-round pick out of college, shifted to the bullpen and went from throwing 89-91 mph on average to routinely throwing 95 mph, and not just on juiced stadium guns, but professionally calibrated PITCHf/x readings. And that is on average; Perkins’ max velocities on four-seam fastballs in the past four years have read as following, moving backwards: 95.8, 97.7, 98.4 and 97.5. When Perkins was a starter, he could reach back for 93-94. As a reliever, he could average that. The same thing happened to a lesser extent with Brian Duensing, who averaged 90-91 as a starter but peaked at 92.4 in 2013.
That isn’t to say velocity is everything. Perkins also developed a devastating slider that he can front door to lefties and put on the back shoe top of righties, so Pelfrey would have to develop at least one reliable secondary offering.
If you’re wondering what Pelfrey’s velocity could look like though, chances are it’s pretty good. Pelfrey told Berardino when he aired his grievances that he actually thought he’d throw slower as a reliever, but if any of these other pitchers are an indication — and make no mistake, there’s no guarantee they are — he could have plus velocity in short bursts.
In 2013, Pelfrey reached 96.3 mph on his fastball for a maximum velocity. With his sinker, he reached 95.5. Those pitches aren’t different enough that he could likely use those as a two-pitch mix, but it’s nice to see the high-end velocity there. Choosing one could depend on the batted-ball mix he wants to have as a reliever. Hochevar added the cutter and went from a solid groundball guy to a fly ball reliever. Of course, that was a solid decision because the Royals have boasted fantastic outfield defense the past couple seasons.
Pelfrey could go with the power sinker to keep his groundball mix, as the infield will likely be better than the outfield defensively this year for the Twins, but a fly ball jump wouldn’t automatically provide disaster for him in a park that plays very big, either. Phil Hughes made it work to some extent.
Now to isolate what secondaries Pelfrey might go with would be interesting. Over his career, Pelfrey has thrown a splitter, a slider, a curve and a changeup in addition to the sinker and four seamer. He’s dabbled with a two-seamer, and could ostensibly add a cutter like Hochevar if he felt so led. Hochevar went from hardly using the cutter in 2012 (9.9 percent) to featuring it (36.8 percent) in 2013.
Based on 2013 outcomes — the last year we have enough data — it appears Pelfrey’s most useful secondary pitch would be either the slider (.618 OPS against) or curve (.657). Another option could be the splitter — which he can also use as a changeup — but that has seen mixed results in sporadic usage over the past five seasons. In 2010, when his usage of the pitch spiked at 15.9 percent, he allowed just a .264/.290/.378 line on it.
All of this is to say that it’ll be interesting to monitor how Pelfrey’s PITCHf/x evolve as he moves from starter to long reliever. If it he takes to the role, it wouldn’t be surprising to see him throwing high-leverage innings in rather short fashion. We’ve seen that before.