Noted relief pitcher and fisherman Glen Perkins had a two-inning save last night for the Twins. Part of it was likely circumstantial -- Perkins entered in the 8th when the Twins were up 3-0, pitched a scoreless inning, and stayed out for the 9th after the Twins tacked on two more runs in the top half. If it was still 3-0, perhaps Jared Burton would have pitched the 9th in this dual-closer system. Still, it was a rather unusual sight for the Twins to have a pitcher work at least two innings for a save. How unusual? Well, we asked Twitter and Twitter -- namely, 10-year internet/blogging veteran Aaron Gleeman (does he now have 10/5 rights?) -- delivered.
Perkins was 11th to go 2+ innings in save under Gardenhire. First since 2008.
So the 11th pitcher in what is now Ron Gardenhire's 11th season as Twins manager. One per year. And if you look at the list he joins, six of the 11 instances were three-plus inning saves in blowouts. (In case you forgot how a pitcher qualifies for a save, read this). Only one of the games looks like an actual case of the closer (Joe Nathan in 2006) coming in with no outs in the 8th inning because Gardy couldn't figure out any other way to stop the bleeding and leaving him in for a two-inning save (with 42 pitches, no less).
In any event, that's possibly more than you wanted to know about two-inning saves during the Ron Gardenhire era, but we were interested by it.
