Friday, January 7, 2011

Righty Lefty Closer Combination for Your Toronto Blue Jays?

According to Ken Davidoff the Blue Jays have interest in Brian Fuentes, which when you think about it would make complete sense. A Brian Fuentes and Octavio Dotel two headed monster closer combination could be the most dominant closer combination of all time, well on paper at least. Fuentes dominated lefties last season and Dotel dominated righties, but neither did all that well against the opposite side of the plate.

Let's take a look at how each side of the plate fared against these pitchers:


Player
OPS against by Right-handed Batters in 2010
OPS against by Left-handed Batters in 2010
Octavio Dotel
.576
.993
Brian Fuentes
.696
.371


If Dotel were to only face righties and Fuentes lefties last year and you combined these totals, this would have resulted in a hitters OPS against of .526. As a comparison hitters have a career .552 OPS against Mariano Rivera.  Unfortunately the last time I checked teams were allowed to pinch hit and each team requires three outs to complete an inning.

1 comment:

  1. If only managers were allowed to swap relievers back and forth on the fly, then Farrell could use Fuentes/Dotel in situational matchups.

    ReplyDelete