Cleveland Indians: Dan Otero’s Path to the World Series
By Jason Burke
The Cleveland Indians bullpen has been the focal point of this year’s playoffs, and while Andrew Miller has been receiving heaps of praise and deservedly so, he is far from a one-man wrecking crew. One reliever in particular, Dan Otero, has had one heck of a journey to make it within a game of clinching the first World Series title in Cleveland since 1948, and has become one of the unsung heroes of the latter innings.
The Cleveland Indians took a flier on Otero a week before Christmas. After a down year with the Oakland Athletics, the A’s placed the 30-year-old reliever on waivers, but that is not where the story begins for Otero.
In 2007 Otero was selected in the 21st round of the June draft by the San Francisco Giants, the same year that they took Madison Bumgarner with the tenth overall pick. It took him until 2012 to make it to the big leagues with the Giants, where he posted a 5.84 ERA in 12 1/3 innings. He was placed on waivers at the end of March the following year, and claimed by the New York Yankees, only to then be claimed by the Oakland Athletics a day later.
He started the 2013 season in Triple-A Sacramento with the A’s (funny enough, Sacramento is now a San Francisco affiliate), and pitched to the tune of a 0.99 ERA across 27 1/3 innings, holding a minuscule 0.549 WHIP and allowing just one walk. He got the call to Oakland for another crack at the big leagues in the middle of June and pitched on three consecutive days against the Seattle Mariners at the Coliseum to begin his new opportunity.
This was just a year after the A’s improbable run to the playoffs, and when the trio of Ryan Cook, Sean Doolittle and Grant Balfour gave the team a pretty good shot at a win when they lined up. For the second straight season the A’s met the Detroit Tigers in the ALDS, and Otero made four scoreless appearances, totaling 5 2/3 innings of relief.
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He became the workhorse out of the bullpen in 2014, totaling 86 2/3 innings while holding a 2.28 ERA and looked like another diamond in the rough for Oakland.
Then in 2015, amidst a season of struggles, Otero got hit around pretty good, allowing 12.3 hits per nine innings and saw his ERA jump by nearly four and a half runs over the previous season, sitting at 6.75.
With that down season, the A’s waived Otero, who was then claimed by the Philadelphia Phillies at the beginning of November as part of their attempt to bring aboard a slew of veteran relievers to help improve their bullpen (Andrew Bailey, David Hernandez, Greg Burke, Michael Mariot), but when the Phillies were working out the deal to send Ken Giles to Houston some room had to be made and Otero became a casualty, being designated for assignment on December 12.
Nearly a week later the Phillies and Cleveland Indians worked out a trade for Otero, who was still only one year removed from being utterly dominant with Oakland. That deal was solely a cash transaction.
For a little bit of scratch, the Indians landed themselves a reliever that went on to post a 1.52 ERA this season while accumulating 70 2/3 innings. His career best ERA was the 1.38 he put up in his first season with Oakland, but that was in just 39 frames.
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From being drafted by a club that was in their heyday of developing pitchers, to hitting the waiver wire, to proving himself as a Major League pitcher, to hitting the waiver wire once more, Dan Otero has had quite the journey to make it to this point in his career. He and his teammates are within a game of adding another title to Cleveland’s repertoire, and it was Otero that recorded the final there outs in the ninth in Game 4 to put the club up 3-1 in the series.
The Indians may not have the biggest names on their pitching staff, especially with the injuries to Carlos Carrasco and Danny Salazar, but their bullpen is filled with enough grinders that they may be able to get this thing done.