A few words about Octavio Dotel
Baseball fans don’t often remember the little guy—the players who fill in the blanks of a win but don’t get the coverage and marketing benefits due to the non-flashy tasks they complete under the guise of a job.
For 15 seasons, Octavio Dotel befuddled hitters. He took them apart pitch by pitch during the regular season or playoffs. He pitched for 13 different teams, which is second in MLB history. He compiled an impressive ERA/FIP split of 3.78/3.70. No matter where he wore a jersey, hitters had difficulty reaching him. He finished with a strikeout rate of at least 10.0 per nine innings in 11 of his 15-year career. Most of the time, hitters were guessing.
He pitched in St. Louis for part of the 2011 season, but Cardinals fans should remember him by his postseason heroics. Covering three series, he struck out 14 batters and walked only one. He was solid against Philadelphia and ran into a bit of trouble with Texas, but it was Milwaukee that he victimized the worst. Ryan Braun was hitting everything and punishing teams, but he couldn’t figure out Dotel.
With runners on, Dotel would carve the MVP up with a combination of heat and offspeed pitches. He’d set Braun up with a fastball, and burn him with a cutter that the bat couldn’t even get close to. It wasn’t like this happened once or twice. Braun repeatedly couldn’t touch Dotel, and it quietly guided the Birds into the next round.
Dotel tragically died in the Dominican Republic last weekend when a roof collapsed on the nightclub where he was hanging out with friends. He was only 51 years old, many years removed from his pitching days.
The impact he had on many teams and games should never be forgotten. Unfortunately, most will have to look up his name and remember who he was, but that’s the nature of life’s whirlwind style. People drop into our sphere, make a dent, and vanish from memory. Few can forget David Freese or Chris Carpenter’s heroics in that postseason, but Dotel’s work goes unnoticed.
He came over in a trade midseason, one of many that John Mozeliak worked that summer. That’s back when Mo had some juice and could pull off a transaction that boosted his club. Colby Rasmus left town, and a handful of players entered St. Louis. Among them, Dotel had the most vital impact.
Before he came to St. Louis, Dotel was a reliever that the Cardinals routinely had trouble against. He ran into the same brick wall mix of pitches and velocities that Braun and others did that fateful fall playoff run. Like Lance Berkman and Larry Walker, it was nice to see him change jerseys and join the good guys.
All one can hope for is to leave something like that behind after their demise. In what one could gather from the brief time he spent in St. Louis, Dotel was a guy who soaked all the fun out of life and never let the proposed end deter his passion.
As the New York Times wrote, he left behind strikeouts and smiles. Somewhere, Mr. Braun should tip his cap in respect.