While attending a merengue concert at a nightclub in his home Dominican Republic, Octavio Dotel, who pitched for 13 big league teams over the course of his 15-year career and won a world championship with the St. Louis Cardinals, was among the dead when the roof collapsed. He was fifty-one.
At first, officials said that Dotel had been pulled from the wreckage and taken to a hospital; but, later on Tuesday, Professional Baseball League of the Dominican Republic spokesman Satosky Terrero confirmed to The Associated Press that Dotel had passed away.
Officials reported that the fall at the Jet Set nightclub resulted in at least 58 fatalities and 160 injuries. According to Terrero, Tony Blanco, who spent eight years working professionally in Japan and one MLB season, also passed away after the fall.
Dotel made his major league debut in 1999 after signing with the New York Mets in 1993 as an amateur free agent. He began his career as a starter and, over the course of 758 games from 1999 to 2013, developed into a dependable and occasionally dominant reliever.
On April 7, 2012, he took the mound for the Detroit Tigers, setting a new record of 13 big league teams he had played for. When Edwin Jackson pitched for his fourteenth team in 2019, he broke the record.
Before Tuesday’s game against Miami, the Mets observed a moment of silence in Dotel’s honor, and the video scoreboard displayed a Dominican flag.
Dotel’s best years were with the Houston Astros in the early 2000s. He was a setup man for star closer Billy Wagner, making 302 appearances and posting a 3.25 ERA in four-plus seasons. He was the fifth of six pitchers to combine on a no-hitter against the New York Yankees in 2003. The next year, he was part of the three-way trade that brought Carlos Beltran to the Astros.
Dotel pitched for nine teams before he landed with the Cardinals, who acquired him from Toronto at the 2011 trade deadline. He appeared in 12 postseason games, including five in the World Series against Texas.
In 2013, he pitched on the Dominican Republic team that won the World Baseball Classic with an 8-0 record.
Dotel finished his major league career with 1,143 strikeouts in 951 innings, a magnificent rate of 10.8 per nine innings. He had a career 59-50 record, 109 saves and 3.78 ERA.
In 2019, Dotel and ex-major leaguer Luis Castillo were among 18 people taken into custody during a large U.S. and Dominican law enforcement operation against drug trafficking and money laundering. Dotel and Castillo were released when a Dominican magistrate judge found insufficient evidence to connect them to the operation.
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