My First Cards

This card features the expression of a player with a career .313 OBP & .352 SLG, staring at the ball as it’s crossing home plate. That look of fascination and utter confusion and amusement about it. Almost like he’s asking himself, “hey, what if I’m a glazed donut?”

Broderick Perkins also makes a cameo in the Joe Lefebvre card, staring from the on deck circle like he’s trying to figure out what’s going on. He’s just standing there, leaning on his bat. Shouldn’t he be warming up to hit?

He’s actually 1 of just 310* players since 1921, to have both a .352 SLG (or lower) & .313 OBP (or lower) in a minimum of 1300 plate appearances. Most of those 310 players were shortstops and players who were so good defensively that they were worth keeping around (Mario Mendoza, Mark Belanger, etc).

Brod Perkins on the other hand, played a position that doesn’t really require a great glove and is usually reserved for power hitters—first base.

The only time he ever had an OBP over .325 was in 1980, when he somehow managed a .423 OBP over 111 plate appearances. He also smacked out a .520 SLG. But like I said, that was in just 111 PA’s.

When ’82 started, the Padres must’ve been hopin’ his 1981 season was just a big slump and that he’d return to his 1980 swing, ’cause they had him play in 125 games.

To me, the most interesting statistic he put up in 1982 deals with how he hit the starting pitcher the 1st time at bat compared with the 2nd time he sees the pitcher.

How do you do that? I mean… the 2nd time you see a pitcher, you have a better idea what he’s dealing that day. the 1st time you see him, you’d have less idea what’s coming and have a harder time against him. Yet, in 1982, Broderick Perkins managed to have less of an idea how to hit a pitcher after he knew what was coming.

I mean, that’s not just a small dropoff in hitting ability, that’s a mammoth difference.

Of course, this got me curious to see if his whole career was like this. It turns out, that he hit like this in every season except 1980 and ’84. Remember, ’80 was the 1 year he showed All-Star potential. In ’84, he just didn’t seem to be able to hit a pitcher the 1st time he saw them either…not just the 2nd.

So I suspect he was just going up there guessing or expecting a first pitch strike & swinging at it. That’s not how to stay in the major leagues, and that’s why his career was so short and why he hit so poorly. It makes me wonder… if Broderick Perkins would’ve learned to outsmart a pitcher, he might’ve become one of the great hitters of all time. Perhaps if the Padres had a hitting coach who noticed this, Brod might’ve developed into a perennial All-Star, if not a Hall of Famer. Maybe.

* – 1,810 players from 1921-2009 accumulated 1,300+ PA’s. This means that 310 is 16.78% of those players. I started the count in ’21, to exclude the deadball era hitters.