Baseball Prospectus

MLB Statistics

Statistics for All Levels

Plate Discipline

Comparable Players (Similarity Index )

BP Annual Player Comments

Year		Comment
2015		You can't predict baseball, but maybe Ryan Dempster can: He elected not to partake in the train wreck that was Boston's 2014 season, spending the entire year on the restricted list in a state of quasi-retirement.
2014		Dempster's 2013 was spoiled by an on-again, off-again groin injury, but he did his job for a Red Sox squad that, while flush with young pitching, was lacking in prepared young pitching. Dempster held on in the rotation for 29 starts even as he pitched just a hair of above replacement level. That sounds dire, but consider that it allowed Allen Webster and his bloated ERA to head back to Rhode Island, limited time spent with the Steven Wright Knuckleball Experience and let the team move Brandon Workman to the bullpen after the trade deadline while using Dempster as the bridge to the return of Clay Buchholz. Granted, Dempster's $13 million price tag was high for a security blanket, but sometimes what you need in a relationship is for the other person just to be there.
2013		After more than 14 seasons in the National League, Dempster announced his presence in the AL last summer with a rocky 12-start stint for Texas. He’ll be staying in the junior circuit after signing a two-year deal with Boston this offseason. One of baseball’s more reliable pitchers since rejoining the starting ranks in 2008, Dempster logged 200-plus innings in four consecutive seasons until notching just under 180 frames last year. Despite his struggles in Texas, the righty had one of his better seasons. Entering his age-36 campaign, he has yet to show signs of slowing down. Although he doesn’t overwhelm with velocity—mostly working at 88-92 mph—he consistently posts strikeout rates north of 20 percent. There’s some concern that Dempster’s numbers will suffer in a full season in the AL and Fenway, but expect a reliable mid-rotation starting pitcher.
2012		With a winsome personality and a sense of humor, Dempster has managed to remain above most of the blame-tossing in Chicago despite results short of his paychecks, spats with his manager, and a self-inflicted injury in 2009 that cost him playing time. His velocity was down a tick in 2011, but the big jump in ERA wasn't really his fault—as shown by both his FIP and FRA—and the Cubs wasted no time picking up his $14 million option for 2012. Though he walks too many to front a rotation, Dempster's committed to his craft, mixing pitches and pitch sequences to support his two fastballs and nasty slider. All indications are that he'll be good enough and durable enough to rack up 200 innings again.
2011		Dempster's transmogrification from former blue-chip Marlin to damaged goods to expensive closer to beloved Cub workhorse ought to be enough of a roller coaster to challenge the notion that American lives have no third act. The late-career addition of a fluttering glove flip when he's pitching from a full windup gives a new generation of Cubs fans one of those lovely idiosyncrasies to forever retain in their mind's eye, like Rick Sutcliffe's big, rolling wrist snap, or Lee Smith's saunter, or Turk Wendell's endless rituals. At this stage, there's little you don't already know about Dempster. Although he posted a career-best strikeout rate, his season can come across as somewhat mediocre, right down to a .500 support-neutral winning percentage. However, he was undercut by some of the bullpen's issues, as he suffered three blown quality starts after the first six innings; using three runs and six frames as the standard, he delivered a winnable ballgame in 23 of 34 turns.
2010		There was some understandable hand-wringing when the Cubs inked Dempster to a four-year, $52 million deal after his first healthy and effective season in a major-league rotation since the Clinton administration, but so far, so good. The affable Canuck logged 200 innings (pausing only for a broken toe), saw small reductions in his strikeout and walk rates, let a few more fly balls leave the yard, lost a smidge of velocity, got more mileage out of his slider, and generally duplicated his 2008 production. There is likely to be some settling of contents as Dempster enters his mid-30s, but nothing he did this year raises any warning flags, and as he’s currently outperforming his contract, some future lack of production has already been paid for. With Zambrano’s health and headspace in question, Lilly entering his walk year with a fresh scar on his shoulder, and Wells' future an open question, Dempster is clearly the rotation’s anchor, if not its ace. Who would have predicted that three years ago?
2009		Teams get so worked up over exotic items like pitching imports from Japan or Cuba, but if you prefer to shop domestic, is there anything that inspires more jibber-jabbery enthusiasm than Marlins moundsmen? Big-game Fish-ing has made hurlers like Carl Pavano, Dontrelle Willis, Kevin Brown, and A.J. Burnett rich beyond their wildest dreams of avarice, but not one of them has topped their single best professional seasons, all of which were made in Marlins uniforms. Last year, though, Dempster managed to become just the second high-profile former Fish to exceed his best year in Miami (as per SNLVAR), and where Josh Beckett's '07 with the Red Sox was a predictable bit of blossoming by the youngster, Dempster's long and winding road back from surgery and failure and relief-work and wildness is a bit more inspiring. The move back into the rotation after years of bullpen work was a risk, but Dempster held up well, and he didn't even lose significant velocity starting; if anything he simplified his repertoire instead of expanding it, relying on pounding the zone with his fastball and moving it around. Re-signed for four years and $52 million, he might yet be cause for Pavano or Willis-like heartburn, but compared to the non-Sabathias on the market, it seems a reasonable risk that the years in the pen will give Dempster the durability to deliver on that deal. Add in an above replacement-level Harry Caray impression and the new, distinctive, distracting glove flip in his delivery, and Dempster has made himself a popular player on a sports scene that loves a bit of personality.
2008		A closer by assignment only, Dempster may not even be that for much longer. He has experienced a steady decline in his groundball rates over the past three seasons which, coupled with command that was never very good to begin with, has rendered him an unreliable ninth-inning option. The Cubs are considering trying him in the rotation, which might not be the worst idea; his PECOTA as a starter includes a 4.78 ERA and sees his VORP improves slightly from the 8.2 above to 10.9.
2007		It wasn`t just that he blew nine saves, but how he blew them. Other pitchers who blow a save might give up a run, allowing the other team to tie, then vulture a win out of it when their team comes back. Not Dempster--when he blew a save last year, it tended to stay blown. The Cubs lost seven of those nine games; Dempster took all seven losses, giving up 19 runs, but the two times he blew a save giving up just one run, the Cubs came back to win. Dempster had 17 appearances in which he gave up two or more runs; Brad Lidge had an awful year, and he had only nine. Mariano Rivera, Trevor Hoffman, and B. J. Ryan had 10 combined. Jon Papelbon only had one month in which he gave up two runs. Dempster`s hold on the closer`s job is only as strong as Kerry Wood`s shoulder is weak.
2006		If you remember the Transformers toy craze of the `80s, you might also remember that most of the transformations were pretty lame. If you`ve got a killer, attack missile-equipped giant cyborg, what possible advantage do you gain from disguising it as a giant robotic space puppy? The element of surprise? Baker`s exercise in vanity--trying to transform Dempster into a starter again--was the equivalent of taking a great weapon and folding it into a useless shape. After six starts and a 5.35 ERA, Dempster went back to the pen, where he cranked out one of the best Cub relief seasons ever. Intriguingly, it wasn`t his strikeout rate that improved but his GB/FB ratio, which he basically doubled to better than 3-1 in relief. The Cubs let his success go to their heads; it isn`t the money ($15.5 million) that`s as troubling as the length. Do they really expect Dempster to pitch three full seasons?
2005		Any time a pitcher returns from Tommy John surgery, it's a good thing. The Cubs seem to have done well for themselves in the deal they signed with Dempster, which included one cheap guaranteed year and a team option, a strategy that paid dividends this year with Jon Lieber and Chris Carpenter. The trouble is that Dempster, when healthy, was not as good a pitcher as Lieber or Carpenter; his resume included just one above-average season (2000), a year in which he still walked 97 hitters and gave up 30 homers in Pro Player Stadium. The usual rap against a pitcher recovering from Tommy John is that his velocity will come back before his command. It's hard to tell if that's the case with Dempster, since his command was never there to begin with. As a power righty out of the bullpen, he might do enough to justify the $2 million that the Cubs are paying him this year, but he's unlikely to do more than that, and he's ill-equipped for a high-leverage role.
2004		Credit the Marlins with trading Dempster, who threw a ton of pitches in 2000 and 2001, at the right time. Dempster was about to get expensive and they had better pitchers coming. Juan Encarnacion has been a league-average right fielder for them, while Dempster gave the Reds 35 starts with an ERA of 6.39 before Tommy John surgery ended his time in Cincinnati. He's been released, and is unlikely to pitch in the majors in 2004. Moving Dempster is just one of many good moves Larry Beinfest made on his way to a championship.
2003		Swags don’t get much sweeter than Bowden’s mid-season flip of $2.4 million worth of Juan Encarnacion and Wilton Guerrero for a legitimate power arm. Dempster’s mechanics were a mess when he arrived from Jeff Torborg’s Chamber of Slag. By the end of the season, Gullett had lowered his leg kick and lengthened his delivery, which helped keep his fastball down and put some bite back on his slider. The Reds aren’t always penurious with their money; although Dempster is eligible for arbitration, they’re committed to seeing if he can be the top-of-the-rotation starter they desperately need.
2002		Dempster wasn't right all year, fighting his control even during his periods of relative effectiveness. He was particularly bad in September and October, an indication that the number of pitches his wildness had forced him to throw—he ranked 14th in the majors in Pitcher Abuse Points—had taken its toll. If he makes 25 starts in 2002, it'll be an upset. One of the arguments for signing Charles Johnson was his impact on the Marlins' young rotation. Given the performances of Dempster, Burnett, Clement, and Chuck Smith, it's hard to see where he had any positive impact. None of the pitchers showed improvement in 2001. This doesn't mean Johnson was a negative; it just means there's no evidence that his "veteran leadership" helped these pitchers.
2001		The youngest survivor of the 1998 Leyland Massacre, Ryan Dempster has been able to put the atrocities he witnessed and suffered behind him and is climbing into the upper echelon of major-league starters. A strenuous off-season regimen added a few mph to Dempster's low-90s four-seam fastball, along with the strength and stamina to maintain his stuff deeper into games. He also improved his command of his fastball and vicious slider, slicing his walk rate by nearly two a game. While Felipe Alou likens Dempster to Curt Schilling, let’s hope that we won’t be seeing any similarities between his workloads and those meted out by Terry Francona.
2000		To his credit, he bounced back from a 1998 in which he was rushed to the majors as part of the Marlins’ Pitcher-Eating Program. Dempster doesn’t have exceptional stuff, but he can be a placeholder while the real pitchers develop, hopefully picking up some trade value along the way. See Meadows, Brian.
1999		Clearly wasn’t ready, and rushing him up was one of the most unfortunate of the various live sacrifices made in ‘98. What’s strange about it is that his assortment isn’t even that good. It doesn’t look like he throws that hard, and tossing him into the fire at the first sign of success was thoughtless.
1998		The other pitcher acquired from Texas for Bobby Witt. He’s got the kind of live arm the Marlins love to collect in trade, but his fastball hasn’t developed a bite to it yet, and he’s still quite hittable. Only 21, a couple of years away, worth keeping an eye on.

BP Articles

BP Chats

BP Roundtables

PITCHf/x Pitcher Profile

A Collaboration between BrooksBaseball.net and Baseball Prospectus - Pitch classifications provided by Pitch Info LLC

Although he has not thrown an MLB pitch in 2024, Ryan Dempster threw 20,036 pitches that were tracked by the PITCHf/x system between 2007 and 2013, all of them occuring in Spring Training. In 2013, he relied primarily on his Fourseam Fastball (90mph) and Slider (84mph), also mixing in a Splitter (82mph) and Cutter (88mph). He also rarely threw a Sinker (89mph).