Just Octavio Being Octavio
In case you missed it, the Colorado Rockies and the Los Angeles Dodgers played a late night thriller on the west coast. Huroki Kuroda put together a strong start, with seven strikeouts against only one walk, allowing two earned runs in seven innings. His Rockies counterpart, Jason Hammel, worked his way around four walks and four hits to allow only two runs in six innings, striking out four along the way. The bullpens, including freshly-demoted Dodgers setup man, Jonathan Broxton, kept things scoreless until extra innings. Joe Torre, going for the win at home, went with his new closer, Octavio Dotel, to start out the 10th, hoping that a scoreless top half would be enough of an opportunity for the Dodgers.
Dotel was certainly looking to improve on his first attempt to save a game with the Dodgers, where it took all of two batters faced for Dotel to blow the save. In one sense, Dotel did improve. This time, it took four batters, including two walks, a stolen base, and two wild pitches for Dotel to bring in the game winning run for the opposing team.
To be fair, Dotel is usually a serviceable reliever. He has crazy stuff, even at 36, and he’s a mortal lock to strike out a batter per inning – he struck out two of the first three batters he faced last night. His FIP this season, however, is only 4.12 and his ZiPS projection is only around 3.70, mainly because he just has no idea where the ball is going. Dotel has a career walk rate of 4.06 and a projected walk rate of 4.20. He can be prone to outings like last night’s, in which the control is just completely missing, and even though that can bring the strikeouts, it’s also going to bring the walks, and subsequently, the runs.
The Dodgers have two relievers that are capable of striking out just as many batters as Dotel while walking far fewer in their bullpen already. One is, of course, Broxton, who has a far superior ground ball rate to go along with a walk rate about one batter lower per nine innings. The other is Hong-Chih Kuo, who has an 11.1 K/9 and a 3.0 BB/9 this season, the best walk rate of the trio. Kuo likely won’t keep the ball inside the park like he has so far this season, but he has comparable strikeout abilities to Dotel to go with superior control and a superior ability to draw ground balls.
Ned Coletti and Joe Torre are living in a world where James McDonald (20 K, 4 BB, 0 HR in 17.2 IP with Pittsburgh) and Andrew Lambo are an acceptable price to add a middling reliever to a team six games out of the playoffs and then turn him into the relief ace over two superior pitchers. The Dodgers are now 12 games out of the NL West lead and 8 games out of the Wild Card. I don’t know what the Dodgers’ endgame was with Octavio Dotel, but there’s no doubt that Coletti and the Los Angeles front office missed big on this one.
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Dear Ned,
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2302/2510825375_176f1608a0.jpg
Ned…I hate you.
He threw three not two wild pitches.
– O. Dotel relieved H. Kuo
– M. Olivo struck out swinging
– M. Mora walked
– E. Young struck out swinging, M. Mora stole second
– M. Mora to third on wild pitch
– D. Fowler walked
– J. Giambi hit for R. Spilborghs
– M. Mora scored, D. Fowler to second on wild pitch
– J. Giambi intentionally walked
– E. Rogers ran for J. Giambi
– D. Fowler to third, E. Rogers to second on wild pitch
– T. Tulowitzki grounded out to shortstop
1 runs, 0 hits, 0 errors
Colorado 3, LA Dodgers 2
Right, I was referring to those that impacted the run scoring.
From what I can tell, Dotel has not been anointed the closer instead of Broxton – it’s more of a mix of Kuo and Dotel, and Torre seems to be leaning towards the former. In this game, Torre used Kuo in the 9th, which certainly makes sense, and in Dotel’s first blown save, Kuo pitched a scoreless 8th and then came back out to pitch the 9th (he’s gone 2 innings several times this year), only giving way to Dotel after he loaded the bases with one out. For all that it hasn’t worked out yet, this may give a better chance for optimal use of the three pitchers – give Dotel the save opportunities with a 2 or 3 run lead, and use Kuo in the critical situations (not that they’re all that critical any more given the state of the Dodgers’ playoff hopes).
The trade, as you say, was utterly indefensible.
#dontaskdotel
The level of loss on this guy is incredible. Even if he is good, the Dodgers don’t make the playoffs and two months of Dotel cost the Dodgers a back-end starter (McDonald) and an OF/1B prospect (Lambo). Even if these guys aren’t going to positively contribute to the Dodgers, they are worth more than a gamble on renting an aged reliever. Ned running the Dodgers is like monkey flying airplane. Look out!
#schadenfrauDOTEL
As a Pirates fan, I love this deal. However, I can’t help but wonder what kind of fun Neal Huntington could have had with an extra draft pick due to Dotel’s Type B status. In a deep draft class, could he have landed another top talent next year?
Except when he accepts arb, right?
In the 2005 offseason, the Dodgers had the chance to make history by appointing the talented and statistically-savvy Asst. GM Kim Ng to the top job. I winced when they reached instead for the tired Old Boy Network route, and named BobbleNed instead. The time since then has been a predictable series of mostly similar winces and moans. Luckily for Ned, the Dodgers have more than enough money to cover up Ned’s clumsiness.
You’re having fun now, Mark?
Wait until Ole’ Snakeskin Boots gets ready to re-sign Andre Ethier (cause you know he’ll still be there in 2013, the team keeping barely good enough to justify his employment).
No I don’t wish pain on you as a fan of a team. But trading prospects (at their lowest value point) for an old middle reliever, to essentially take over the job of a guy who happened to get cold (probably because Torre abuses the piss out of his arm), sounds exactly like the kind of thing Coletti and Torre would want. They are both blind squirrels who found a 10 year supply of nuts out of mostly luck.
Anyway, sorry man, but on the bright side, you could be a Met fan.
To any of my fellow Dodger fans who are irate that the Dodgers rented Dotel for an outfield prospect and a back-end starter: Wait to see how you feel when you realize that James McDonald is not a back-end starter…and it’s not the “starter” part that I’m disagreeing to!