Raymond Thomas Hunter, Orioles’ Closer?

With Grant Balfour falling through as a potential closer for the Orioles, the club is left looking for another option to close out ballgames. While many would like the O’s to go completely bullpen and closer by committee, the reality is that Buck and Dan Duquette would like to go into the season with a named closer in place. There are still a few relievers, including Balfour, still on the market but it seems that price and health are going to leave the club with few options.

Discuss this post and the O’s potential closer on the BSL forums here.

That leaves the club taking a hard look at whether anyone on their current roster could fill the role of closer in 2014. There are several candidates who could have some success as a closer including Brian Matusz, Darren O’Day, Ryan Webb, and Tommy Hunter.

Matusz has too many issues with retiring right-handed batters which would limit his value as a closer. Should he prove that he can get righties out though, the O’s might consider giving him another crack at the rotation which further limits his odds of being named closer.

Darren O’Day has been arguably the best reliever the O’s have had the past two years, but his unorthodox delivery would be extremely atypical for a closer. It’s atypical for any type of pitcher really. Still, O’Day has posted ERAs under 2.30 the past two seasons while throwing 60+ innings in both years. Despite this, he’s most likely to fill a setup role, which might be a better use of his skills anyway.

So that leaves two contenders for the coveted closing role: Ryan Webb and Tommy Hunter.

There are a few traits that a closer should have if you want to take advantage of:

Ability to pitch in 2 to 3 consecutive games (nights)

Minimal platoon splits

High K% or High GB%

This list isn’t exhaustive, or even difficult to appreciate. These traits are something you’d like in any pitcher, though it’s possibly more amplified for a closer. So let’s take a look at how Webb and Hunter fit under those criteria.

Webb pitched on consecutive days 6 times in 2013, not including pitching on 3 conseutive days from 7/7 through 7/9. On the second or third day pitching, Webb’s stats ended up as follows:

11 IP 4.91 ERA 1.36 WHIP 7.36 K/9 3.27 BB/9 2.25 K/BB

Those numbers don’t exactly jump off the page. At best you could call it mediocre in a small sample size. At worst it’s tragic, especially if you want to give him the responsibility of pitching on no rest more often.

Hunter pitched on back to back days on one less occasion, but did throw on three consecutive days on one occasion as well. Hunter’s numbers on the second or third day of those series matched up to Webb as follows:

9.2 IP 3.72 ERA 1.55 WHIP 4.65 K/9 2.79 BB/9 1.67 K/BB

Again, a very small sample size, that doesn’t necessarily tell us much. Hunter can pitch on back to back days, like Webb, but the results weren’t great. So that doesn’t get us much of anywhere.

How about platoon splits? Over his career Webb has a wOBA split .050 points higher against lefties than he does righties. In 2013 that changed though, as Webb gave up a wOBA against of .307 against lefties, and .293 against lefties. In fact, Jason Collette dedicated a whole article to Webb’s improvement against lefties earlier this offseason.

Hunter, for his career, has what one might call platoon issues. In 2013 it was as apparent as ever, with Hunter giving up a wOBA of .369 to left-handed batters. Righties though posted a wOBA of just .162 which means that Hunter is among the best in the bullpen at getting right-handed batters out.

With that in mind, we should take a look at the third criteria listed above: ability to get strikeouts or ground balls. Webb is not going to wow you with his strikeout totals, getting only 6.05 K/9 in 2013. Hunter isn’t much better though, he only strikes out 7.09 batters per nine innings despite high 90s heat out of the ‘pen. At least Webb can get groundballs at a significant rate, posting ground ball percentages of 56.3% in 2013, 51.7% in 2012, and 60.9% in 2011. Hunter on the other hand struggles to get groundballs, posting groundball percentages of 39%, 45.4%, and 41% the past three seasons.

We know that the Orioles have been looking at Tommy Hunter as a potential closer for the Orioles. Hunter brings the heat that you would expect from a top notch relief pitcher. However, Hunter doesn’t have the strikeout rates you’d expect from a pitcher with a fastball that averaged over 97 mph last season. Based on the criteria I listed above, the key traits that you’d expect out of a closer, Ryan Webb appears to be the better option for closer. When he was acquired I opined that he might be a better and (obviously) cheaper Jim Johnson.

So if we assume that the O’s decide not to bring in an expensive closer option like Fernando Rodney, but rather fill the role internally, they’ll be asking themselves the same questions I’ve listed above. And if they were to ask my opinion? Well, my answer to ‘Raymond Thomas Hunter, Orioles’ Closer?’ is no. My answer to ‘Ryan Christopher Webb, Orioles Closer?’ however, that would be a yes.