He runs a good bullpen, on the whole. Nobody languishes on the bench. Players rarely get over-used except when the rotation can't hold up their end. And he's had a long history of getting great performances out of guys with mixed track records elsewhere.

Furthermore, departing relief pitchers continually remark on how the strength of his management is giving people defined roles that put them in a position to succeed. That's part of managing people, and it's non-negligible.

At the same time, we needed somebody better than our third-best lefty in to face Davis (shit, and Markakis) yesterday. Our closer happens to be pretty good and left-handed, so maybe that was a good opportunity to think outside the box and bring Perkins in to retire the best part of the Orioles order.