Does Switch-Hitting Still Make Sense for Blake Perkins?

When Blake Perkins stepped into the left-handed batter’s box to face Arizona Diamondbacks right-hander Taylor Clarke on Friday night, it was his first plate appearance from the left side in nearly a month. The switch-hitting Perkins last hit left-handed in Las Vegas on June 8, and like his at-bat in Arizona, it only happened because the game went to extra innings after he entered as a pinch-runner. Since May 16, he has taken just six plate appearances as a left-handed hitter.

A natural right-handed hitter, Perkins has typically fared best from that side, making more contact and hitting for more power. As a lefty, he’s never truly been close to an average hitter, but that matchup flexibility added enough value to his glove-first profile to make him a solid big-leaguer. That hasn’t been true this year, as his very limited production from the left side has bottomed out. He has just two left-handed hits, one of which was a bunt single.

Perkins continues to swing from both sides, but in reality, he does not function as a switch-hitter on the 2026 Brewers. That raises the question of whether he should hit exclusively right-handed moving forward, a transition he considered a few times earlier in his career.

There are numerous fairly recent examples of hitters giving up switch-hitting during their big-league careers. Perkins wouldn’t be the first Brewer to do it within the last two seasons. In Triple-A last year, the club encouraged Anthony Seigler to focus solely on hitting from his best side before his eventual debut.

However, many of those players, including Seigler, stopped hitting right-handed to focus solely on their left-handed swing. That’s usually a worthwhile tradeoff, as left-handed hitters have the platoon advantage the majority of the time, particularly against starting pitchers. In every season of the pitch-tracking era (since 2008), right-handed pitchers have thrown more than 70% of all pitches.

For Perkins, it might make some sense in the short term to focus solely on being an average right-handed hitter against lefties, but he’s more likely to prolong his opportunities beyond this season by becoming passable again from both sides. His offense will probably never be good enough to make him a full-time player, but he’ll have a much better chance of getting starts in center field with a future team if he can hit left-handed.

That may still be a possibility, as his left-handed swing does not look irretrievably broken. According to Statcast, Perkins’s bat speed and swing path from the left side are nearly identical to his career averages. In a small sample this year, he’s gotten underneath or been jammed by too many fastballs, and he’s waved early at slower stuff. That’s left him hitting too many pop-ups and ground balls, a poor combination for any hitter.

This version of Perkins only helps the Brewers in a limited role. He also owes most of those opportunities to injuries, as the club has been down a right-handed-hitting outfielder—first Jackson Chourio, then Brandon Lockridge—for most of the year. Once Lockridge and Luis Lara start factoring into the mix, Perkins could head back to Triple-A, where he’d have more opportunities to get right.

Those opportunities won’t matter much for the Brewers, but they may still matter to Perkins, who will have to start thinking more broadly about his career prospects. With Lockridge still two seasons away from arbitration and Lara on a recently signed extension, Perkins's time as a productive fourth outfielder in Milwaukee is probably nearing its end. He's a beloved teammate and has defensive and baserunning value, though, so this stop need not be the last one on his tour of the major leagues.