Pirates Close to Signing Octavio Dotel

Maybe we should sign him to be our closer, no?

Career numbers are useful only insofar as they are a reflection of a player’s likely future performance. Right now, Capps’s career numbers may not be, insofar as he was, in technical language, God-awful in ’09.

Dotel’s career stats are significantly inflated by the beginning of his career, when he was a starter. He was terrible until he moved to the bullpen and has been outstanding since, except for some brief struggles around the time of his TJ surgery. Those starter innings are still over a quarter of his career total. As a reliever, his ERA drops to 3.11 and his WHIP to 1.12. (Ironically, Capps was horrible as a starter in the minors. Like Dotel, he improved immediately and dramatically once he was moved. Dotel, however, was a far better prospect than Capps and made it to the majors as a starter.)

Looking at save totals is equally pointless. Dotel’s best years came when he was on a team with Billy Wagner, one of the 4-5 best closers ever. If the Astros hadn’t had Wagner, Dotel’s career would have been very different.

First off, you’re too smart a fan to be using “Saves” as a meaningful statistical measure. Save that for the PBC Blog, where those types of overhyped stats seem to matter to the masses.

Secondly, on the surface, Capps does have marginally better numbers. I’ll raise a couple of others that I feel are more important:

BA against:
.218 for Dotel
.261 for Capps

So Dotel may walk more batters than Capps, which leads to a higher OBP against, but I’d rather have a guy who gives up fewer hits, since that tends to minimize the effect of walks.

Their HR/9 are virtually equal (1.2 for Dotel, 1.1 for Capps), but Dotel has only a .384 SLG against, while Capps has a .414 SLG against, due to a higher instance of 2B/9.

Capps gets hit more often and harder than Dotel does, and Capps’ numbers have been on the rise the past two years since his strong 2007 season.

dotel has not been a closer his entire career so the save total you can throw out the window. and i would like to see capps era after 11 season.

I didn’t like when NH said that relief production was unreliable, and that’s why we get rid of Chavez. That may be true. But Team NH probably sees relievers like I and others here do – if they’re putting up solid peripheral stats like strikeouts and FIP (link), then they are more likely to continue to do so. This is combined with scouting, but I’d imagine they are stats guys as well. ERA and such will be a crapshoot, but Meek and Hanrahan are much more likely to perform at a high level in the future than Chavez. Dotel’s FIP and other peripherals the past 3 years suggest he’s likely a sub-4 ERA pitcher.

I get that Huntington/Coonelly don’t want to be explaining advanced stats to the Post-Gazette, so they take the “crapshoot” explanation instead. But there’s probably more to it than this little soundbite, IMO.

That Huntington offered Matt Capps almost $3M to come back, right? Why would he do that if that were “overpriced when you look at it based on the NH valuation of relievers”.

He is offering the same exact money to a different pitcher, and that pitcher is very likely to be at least Capps’ equal or better.

One problem with these pronouncements that NH tends to make is that he isn’t careful about qualifying them and people read too much into them. It’s absolutely true, as the Pirates’ stats guy has determined, that reliever performance generally speaking is extremely erratic. If you look at the actual comment NH made, however, he said their stats people have found that most of the top relievers change from year to year. Some don’t. It’s ludicrous to think that you can’t ever judge a reliever by past performance and expect that performance to continue. Would anybody turn down a chance to get Mariano Rivera at a manageable price based on the notion that you couldn’t count on him to continue pitching well?

Dotel became a full-time reliever in 2001. With the exception of 2006, when he was coming back from TJ surgery, and part of 2007, when he was struggling with an oblique strain, he’s pitched well every single year. This is not Jesse Chavez we’re talking about, it’s a guy who’s been one of the better, often one of the best, relievers in MLB over the past decade. This attempt to turn NH’s statement against him, in my view, is simply taking a statement about reliever unpredictability and distorting it into an extreme, absolute rule that clearly wasn’t intended and that no rational FO would subscribe to. At best it’s sophistry and, at worst, it’s just intentionally twisting reality to support an agenda of reflexively bashing every single move the FO makes (or in this case one it hasn’t even made yet).

Less than a million, but with performance bonuses.