Why Penn Murfee and Angel Perdomo are worth the wait

Atlanta spends two 40-man spots on some (potential) delayed gratification.

Of all the players I’ve written about this offseason, Penn Murfee and Angel Perdomo are uniquely irrelevant to the Braves’ near-term outlook. Each of them underwent Tommy John surgery in 2023. Each will be at least 30 years old by the time he pitches in 2025. Each was acquired in the immediate aftermath of a more publicly scrutinized roster move - Murfee after purging half the roster at the non-tender deadline, Perdomo after trading for Jarred Kelenic. The Braves might as well have said, “Hey, don’t mind us. We’re just going to do a bit of reliever signing. No graphics, no Zoom press conferences, not even a full-sized press release; we don’t want to clog up your social media feeds.”

But here I am, writing about Penn Murfee and Angel Perdomo. Two former anonymous prospects with relatively short major league track records who were dumped for nothing by their previous teams, one of which is really good at developing pitching. Two teams that really need cheap talent looked at Murfee and Perdomo and said, “We’d just prefer an empty 40-man spot, thanks.”

So why do I care? Because the Braves acquired one of 2022’s best relievers and one of 2023’s best relievers (in a smaller sample) for free.

Penn Murfee

Overview

Murfee was a late bloomer, debuting in 2022 at the ripe old age of 28. He pitched 69.1 innings in 2022, then 14 innings with highly erratic command in 2023, then got put on the shelf with a torn UCL. Murfee got Tommy John in late June 2023, so while it’s technically possible that he’s back on the mound for some late September appearances, it seems much likelier that he makes his Braves debut in 2025.

I think Murfee’s 2022 walk rate is more representative of what to expect from him than his ballooning 2023 number, since a study by Baseball Prospectus showed that pitchers often saw a drop in command the season they tore their UCL, and that the command drop corrected itself within post-injury. So let’s look at that campaign.

Here are the top 25 relievers in baseball by xwOBA in 2022 (min 200 PAs).

First of all, I didn’t intend for this to be a 2022 Braves bullpen screenshot, but look at Kenley Jansen at #9, A.J. Minter at #12 and Dylan Lee at #20.

But not so far behind them, one spot ahead of pre-breakout Félix Bautista, is Penn Murfee. Allow me to briefly list some other good relievers who were not as good as Penn Murfee in 2022:

• Camilo Doval

• Reynaldo López (in his career-best relief season so far)

• Josh Hader

• Raisel Iglesias

• David Bednar

• Jordan Romano

• Alexis Díaz

And Murfee pitched a full season of relief; this wasn’t a fluke. So how did he do it?

Arsenal

93 percent of Murfee’s pitches were either sweepers (51 percent) or four-seamers (42 percent). These pitches were both fascinating for very different reasons.

Let’s start with the sweeper. This was a top ten pitch in baseball. Seriously. Here’s a list of xwOBA leaders for pitches thrown at least 400 times last year.

There are a lot of pitches on this list you’re familiar with. The absurd sliders of Spencer Strider, Edwin Díaz, and Will Smith, Max Fried’s signature curveball, Kevin Gausman’s famous splitter. And Penn Murfee’s sweeper is right there among them. In the sweeper craze of the last few years, Murfee had the best one. And the pitch was somehow even better in 2023. It’s very easy to see why this works. Want to watch one for fun?

==So now let’s talk about the four-seamer. Murfee will probably be the softest tosser in the Braves bullpen. Even assuming his stuff returns to pre-Tommy John form, his fastball averages about 89 mph. But what if I told you that pitch performed about as well as Tyler Glasnow’s fastball?

There are 37 pitchers last year who threw at least 200 fastballs under 90 mph. Most of these guys had awful fastballs; the median xwOBA against on these pitches was .368 (approximately the equivalent of facing a lineup full of Austin Rileys every day). Penn Murfee ranked 9th among this group, with a .339 xwOBA against. Why?

Take a look at this list of pitchers and try to guess what makes Murfee’s fastball still kinda work.

Here’s a video of a Murfee fastball.

Like O’Day, Hill, Cimber, Rogers, Cishek, and many others, Murfee pitches from the kind of delivery that makes a team say, “Off to the bullpen you go.”

But wait, there’s more! Lookout Landing, the SB Nation Mariners blog, did a great analysis of Murfee’s repertoire in 2022, featuring an interview with none other than Murfee himself. I’ll butcher their conclusion if I try to put it in my words, so here’s their takeaway.

By throwing his sweeping slider, Murfee can sometimes fully erase hitters without another trick. But when he does go to his fastball, Murfee is, in his own words, throwing almost the same exact pitch as the massive sweeper. Instead, however, despite nearly the same spin and a football spiral, supinated release, Murfee is throwing a nearly totally straight fastball that only suffers a bit more late sink than a typical four-seamer. It is, essentially, a firm gyroball, spinning just the same as the massive sweeping slider 8-10 mph its lesser. This near-match in spin creates a significant boost in deception that seems to help both pitches play up.

So the conclusion here: Murfee is not a mechanical or stuff tweak away from effectiveness. Murfee is a fully arrived, elite reliever. Maybe Seattle waiving Penn Murfee implies that they’re bearish that he’ll return to form after Tommy John. But it’s just as likely that given how effective they are at building relievers out of thin air, they don’t have the patience to let him take a 40-man spot over the offseason and then spend a year rehabbing.

Angel Perdomo

Overview

Perdomo entered 2023 as a 29-year-old reliever in his fourth organization. He had pitched 19.2 major league innings over the previous two seasons and had accumulated -0.3 fWAR. Perdomo had top-tier strikeout stuff - he hadn’t posted a strikeout rate below 30 percent in any stint at any level (min. 3 innings) since 2018. But with a career walk rate in the high teens, it seemed like a long shot that he’d ever harness his stuff well enough to even meet the low command bar expected of a stuff-heavy reliever.

And then 2023 came around, and between being promoted to the majors and tearing his UCL, Perdomo put on a gangbusters 29-inning campaign. Let’s look at the top relievers in baseball, min 100 PAs.

Perdomo put up half a season worth of relief that stacks up favorably against the campaigns of Devin Williams, José Alvarado, Paul Sewald, and (not pictured) the likes of Aroldis Chapman, David Bednar, and Emmanuel Clase. He also struck out hitters at a higher clip than virtually every reliever in baseball.

So how did Perdomo get the job done?

Arsenal

Remember how Penn Murfee’s sweeper was a top ten pitch in baseball in 2022? Angel Perdomo’s slider was a top ten pitch in baseball in 2023.

This list of pitches (min. 100 pitches thrown) is another collection of mostly very expensive pitchers’ favorite pitches. Angel Perdomo’s slider was more effective than any pitch that any Brave threw. In fact, it was more effective than any pitch that any pitcher in the NL East threw.

Let’s see what it does to a hitter with pretty good plate discipline.

No sprinting to first that time, Brandon.

Like Murfee, Perdomo’s other bread-and-butter pitch is his fastball. Unlike Murfee, though, Perdomo’s fastball wasn’t just pretty good - it was affirmatively great in 2023. Of the 495 four-seamers thrown at least 100 times leaguewide, Perdomo’s ranked 58th in xwOBA against at .285. While the velocity was average, at around 94 mph, Perdomo’s high-end spin rates and extension likely made the pitch play above its radar gun readings. Unfortunately, as I’ve said before, I’m not particularly knowledgeable about pitch characteristics, so unless the Pirates SB Nation blog wants to drop a breakdown of Perdomo’s repertoire, this is basically the furthest I can take you. But let’s watch one of his fastballs anyway.

Takeaways

As I’ve discussed in this space before, reliever production is unpredictable. And even though Tommy John surgery is more often a speed bump than it is a roadblock these days, there’s no guarantee either Murfee or Perdomo can replicate their career-year repertoires in 2025, let alone their performance.

But this is how smart teams should acquire relievers - especially smart teams with enough 40-man spots that it’s not a big deal to temporarily block a few until the 60-day IL reopens. Why spend a ton of money signing a big-name reliever to a long-term contract when for virtually no money, you can acquire cheap control of two Kirkland Signature versions of that reliever?

The Braves have done exactly that. And now, all they have to do is wait.

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