Daily Graphing – Danys Baez

If you remember, the Mets did not pick up Braden Looper's contract leaving the team without a closer. I wrote about that here if you need a refresher on how mediocre Braden Looper really is. The Mets Plan “A” is to acquire Billy Wagner who is one of the best closers in baseball. Plan “B” seems to be to acquire Danys Baez. Would Danys Baez really be an improvement over Braden Looper?

K9

If you compare their strikeouts per 9 innings (K/9), you'll see that Danys Baez was a good deal better than Braden Looper last year. Unfortunately, a K/9 of 6.3 for a closer isn't very appealing. Take a look at the list of closers who over the past 4 years had a K/9 under 8.

Name		K/9	BB/9	SV	BS	S%
Danny Graves	4.3	2.4	85	18	83%
Jose Jimenez	4.8	2.4	69	12	85%
Danny Kolb	5.7	4.1	72	17	81%
Braden Looper	5.8	2.8	98	22	82%
Mike Williams	5.9	4.5	74	11	87%
D. Hermanson	6.0	3.0	52	14	79%
Jose Mesa 	6.3	4.0	139	25	85%
Rocky Biddle	6.7	4.4	46	13	78%
Danys Baez	7.1	3.9	102	23	82%
Tim Worrell	7.2	3.0	58	19	75%
Bob Wickman	7.4	2.9	78	8	91%
Todd Jones	7.4	3.1	43	18	70%
Jorge Julio	7.8	4.1	83	20	81%
Mike DeJean	7.9	4.5	46	14	77%

11 of the other 13 were ejected from closer position for poor performance. If I were the Mets, I'd seriously consider a different plan “B”. I don't think Danys Baez is the right person to fill their empty closer position.





David Appelman is the creator of FanGraphs.

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