When Octavio Dotel throws his first pitch of the 2012 season, he will establish a major league record. It won’t matter what the pitch is, whether it’s a ball or a strike or if it’s hit into the stands fair or foul.
Dotel, however, may want to get the ball back and put it in his pocket as a keepsake. That is, if the Hall of Fame doesn’t claim it first for display in Cooperstown. Dotel may go for that idea because how else will he be in the Hall of Fame?
When Dotel throws his first pitch, he will have officially played for the Detroit Tigers, and they will be the 13th major league team in his career. Until that pitch, the 38-year-old relief pitcher remains tied with Matt Stairs, Ron Villone and Deacon McGuire, Elias Sports Bureau says, for having played for the most teams in a major league career.
Given his history and his durability, Dotel could catch Bobo Newsom for changing teams the most times in his career. Newsom did it 16 times, twice more than Terry Mulholland and Rudy Seanez, Elias research shows.
A four-decade pitcher from 1929 through 1953, Newsom played for nine different teams but had encore appearances with four of them, including the Washington Senators five times, the St. Louis Browns three times and the Philadelphia Athletics and Brooklyn Dodgers twice each.
How a player can have the misfortune of pitching for the Senators, the Browns and the Athletics, three of the worst teams of that era, I don’t know, but Newsom got to pitch for them a total of 10 times.
Dotel, meanwhile, has not had a return engagement with any of his 13 teams. He has stayed with three of them for more than a season – Astros, Athletics, White Sox – but for the most part he has moved on after a single season. He has been traded six times and been a free agent six times.
“There are guys who when they’re free agents will have one team interested,” Dotel’s agent, Dan Horwits, said. “But in his case every time he’s been a free agent it’s been numerous teams that are interested. It’s the same type of process every year.”
Last month Dotel signed with the Tigers for a guaranteed $3.5 million – a $3 million salary for this year and a $500,000 buyout of a $3.5 million salary for an option for 2013.
It was the third straight off-season in which Dotel signed a one-year contract with an option for a second year. In the first two instances, the teams that signed him traded him before they had to decide what to do about the option.
In 2010 Pittsburgh traded him to Los Angeles July 31 and on Sept. 18 of that season the Dodgers traded Dotel to Colorado. Last year Toronto signed him Jan. 3, then traded him to St. Louis July 27. He relieved in 12 of the Cardinals’ 18 post-season games, gaining two victories and incurring one loss. The Cardinals did not exercise his option for this year.
The timing of his trades the past two seasons has demonstrated Dotel’s usefulness to teams in playoff races, and teams’ pursuit of him as a free agent has shown that he remains an attractive pitcher.
“He still throws 93, 94,” Horwits said in a telephone interview. “He’s got a rubber arm. He’s had one Tommy John surgery; other than that he’s been healthy.”
Dotel had elbow surgery in 2005 but came back healthy enough to sign his only multi-year contract, a two-year, $11 million deal, with the Chicago White Sox for 2008 and ‘09, in which he relieved in 134 games. Yet his contracts since then have been the one-year guaranteed, one option year variety. The White Sox contract was also the only one of six contracts he has signed as a free agent that has provided more than one guaranteed year.
“I think he would prefer to be in the same place for a couple of years,” Horwits said. “I know he liked the Chicago situation and the way it worked.”
Teams like the way Dotel works. With 62 or more relief appearances each of the last four seasons, he has demonstrated that his age has not slowed him and that he can continue to play for several more one-year contracts.
That was something Stairs was not prepared to do. A few days after the Washington Nationals, his record-tying 12th team, unconditionally released him last August, the 43-year-old outfielder/pinch-hitter announced his retirement. A career-low .154 batting average in 56 games and 65 at-bats most likely had something to do with his decision.
Dotel, on the other hand, had a 3.28 earned run average and .182 opponents’ batting average in 29 relief appearances and 32 strikeouts in 24 2/3 innings for the Cardinals. If he pitches that way for the Tigers in the coming season, he may induce them to pick up his option for 2013 and turn his contract into a multi-year deal.
* * *
This Web site has turned into an unexpected multi-year deal. This is the 400th column to appear on the site, and three and a half years have elapsed since its birth.
Unfortunately, I don’t always find the time to respond to all of the e-mail from readers, but I try to answer as many as possible and I certainly appreciate your reading the columns.