While reports of coveting Monsieur Julio (see, I’m practicing French!) are met in this corner with several retches and a sniff of disgust, the ongoing rumblings that the Cubs might be following Octavio Dotel are more to my liking.

Dotel struggled a bit last year in Oakland, leading to some speculation that his large doses of innings were finally catching up to him, but his final numbers weren’t too shabby:

      INN    H    HR   BB    K    Sv  BlSv  ERA
2004  85.1   68   13   33   122   36   9    3.69

Only the home runs allowed ups the rate on my ticker a bit, but Dotel had good numbers in that column the three years previous, and I guess it isn’t that horrifying.

PECOTA thinks he’ll be just dandy this season, and I doubt many Cubs fans wouldn’t take a line from a closer that looked like…

      INN    H    HR   BB    K    ERA
2005  80.7   59	  12   28    82	  3.21

A lot of things, however, would have to happen for the Cubs to get Dotel.

• The current members of the Cubs bullpen need to prove that they fail as closers
• The Cubs need to prove that they are a competitive team
• Dotel needs to pitch well
• The A’s need to flail a bit, enough so that moving Dotel makes sense
• Someone else in the A’s bullpen needs to step up a bit, proving they can close

This leaves aside the whole talent issue: who do the Cubs have that Oakland covets?

And then there’s the whole angle that maybe the Cubs aren’t interested in Dotel at all. At least, that’s what the man who’d know, Jim Hendry, hints:

The Cubs are downplaying speculation that they are pursuing either the Oakland Athletics’ Octavio Dotel or the Detroit Tigers’ Ugueth Urbina in a trade, though their scouts will be surveying other camps closely for bullpen help. Hendry said he has had no conversations with A’s general manager Billy Beane about trading for Dotel.