Below is a table generated by Baseball Reference's Play Index (which is on a free trial until April 15th). I set the parameters from 2009-2013, which only included how they performed in the 9th inning. I then deleted out everyone that isn't currently in the Tigers bullpen:
| Rk | Player | Split | From | To | G | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | IBB | SO | HBP | BF | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 | Al Alburquerque | 9th inning | 2011 | 2011 | 11 | 1.08 | 8.1 | 6 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 8 | 2 | 16 | 1 | 40 | 1.680 | .194 | .375 | .194 | .569 |
| 13 | Brayan Villarreal | 9th inning | 2011 | 2012 | 12 | 2.89 | 9.1 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 8 | 0 | 10 | 0 | 41 | 1.500 | .182 | .341 | .212 | .554 |
| 15 | Joaquin Benoit | 9th inning | 2011 | 2013 | 31 | 3.67 | 27.0 | 18 | 12 | 11 | 3 | 7 | 1 | 29 | 0 | 102 | 0.926 | .191 | .245 | .340 | .586 |
| 17 | Phil Coke | 9th inning | 2010 | 2013 | 34 | 4.23 | 27.2 | 29 | 12 | 13 | 1 | 13 | 3 | 17 | 1 | 115 | 1.518 | .299 | .384 | .392 | .776 |
| 19 | Darin Downs | 9th inning | 2012 | 2012 | 2 | 4.50 | 2.0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 9 | 1.500 | .250 | .333 | .375 | .708 |
| 22 | Octavio Dotel | 9th inning | 2012 | 2012 | 12 | 12.38 | 8.0 | 14 | 10 | 11 | 1 | 5 | 2 | 6 | 0 | 43 | 2.375 | .378 | .442 | .541 | .982 |
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 4/2/2013.
Al Alburquerque and Brayan Villarreal have low ERA's, but very high WHIP's due to a lot of walks.
Joaquin Benoit's looks like the best option. Not only does he have a lot of experience (at least more than anyone other than Coke), but he's held opponents to only a .191 AVG, he has more than a K/inning and very low walk totals.
Phil Coke's ERA doesn't look too bad, but his WHIP and opponents batting line against does, probably due to facing right-handed batters.
Darin Downs only has 2 innings of experience pitching the 9th inning, not nearly enough to properly evaluate (then again, technically neither is 8-9 innings).
Octavio Dotel surprised me the most. He has the most experience closing out games, yet he has the highest ERA. This is a good example of why small samples shouldn't be used, as he probably wouldn't be this awful if given the bulk of the save opportunities. Also, it's only restricting him to 2012, since I set the parameters to only Tigers pitchers (2012 was the only year he's pitched as a Tiger). Luckily, we can get the information from his total years in the 9th inning from 2009-2012:
| Rk | Player | Split | From | To | G | SO | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | IBB | HBP | BF | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 44 | Octavio Dotel | 9th inning | 2009 | 2012 | 76 | 74 | 4.82 | 65.1 | 58 | 41 | 35 | 9 | 25 | 3 | 3 | 280 | 1.270 | .235 | .308 | .429 | .737 |
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 4/2/2013.
Maybe ERA isn't the best stat to use. One sabermetric stat is Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) , which only uses home runs, walks, hit by pitches and strikeouts (events that the pitcher has the most control over). The formula is ((13*HR)+(3*(BB+HBP))-(2*K))/IP + constant. The constant puts it on the same scale as ERA. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to use 3.2 as the constant.
FIP
|
|
|---|---|
Darin Downs
|
1.70
|
Al Alburquerque
|
2.60
|
Joaquin Benoit
|
3.27
|
Brayan Villarreal
|
3.63
|
Phil Coke
|
3.96
|
Octavio Dotel*
|
4.01
|
I'm still dismissing Downs due to a small sample size (again, it's not like anyone other than Dotel has a big sample anyway). *I'm using the full 65 1/3 inning sample from Dotel in this calculation, and he still comes off as the weakest one (but not much worse than Phil Coke). I find that very interesting. In the meantime, Alburquerque, Benoit and Villarreal still look like very capable options.
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