Mota, Casilla, or Ramirez?

The Giants will have a decision to make when Brian Wilson returns from injury. The decision will be, who to keep? Or, if your glass is half full of emptiness, who goes?

There's some debate going on at my favorite Giants spot, McCovey Chronicles, over this very thing. Of the three, perhaps four candidates to go when Wilson's beard appears in the bullpen again, I'm a little puzzled by the comparisons for three of them.

Guillermo Mota, Santiago Casilla, and Ramon Ramirez.

What we have are different folks fixated on a particular one of them, with the thought that the particular one they're fixated on should go. Thoughts (and stats) have been thrown around to support the arguments, but I find myself a bit confused as to what evidence supports one choice over another (at least strongly).

While it's tempting to do a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately-in-a-Giants-uniform sort of angle to this, I think it's important to look at a body of work...or, in other words, an entire career. Casilla's 2010 for the Giants was very, very good, Ramirez's was acceptable, and Mota's was tolerable (barely). But with relievers' seasons tending to be chaotic in terms of results from year-to-year, how else can we project what they might do other than looking at what they've done over their careers?

Onward, I say. Let's compare career numbers for them in a few telling reliever categories:

• K/9 - Mota (7.1), Casilla (8.1), Ramirez (7.4)
• BB/9 - Mota (3.5), Casilla (4.4), Ramirez (3.7)
• K/BB Ratio - Mota (2.03), Casilla (1.82), Ramirez (1.98)
• WHIP - Mota (1.27), Casilla (1.48), Ramirez (1.26)
• H/9 - Mota (8.0), Casilla (8.9), Ramirez (7.6)
• HR/9 - Mota (0.9), Casilla (0.9), Ramirez (0.7)
• OPS Against - Mota (.697), Casilla (.747), Ramirez (.667)

If I had to look at those numbers and pick the best pitcher of the three, I'd be inclined to go with Ramon Ramirez.

Mota's numbers are slightly better in a couple of categories, but he's 37 years old and going to get worse, not better.

Casilla, again, had a wonderful year for the Giants last year, but it was his only wonderful year, ever. He's 30, so his control issues and the fact that opponents have found a way to hit pretty well off of him for the majority of his career is something I would expect to happen to him again...perhaps this very season.

Ramirez is 29...he was acceptable last year, although his K/9 and OPS against suggest he had a decent dose of luck to go along with his skill. Still, his numbers the previous years support a much better K/9 and a strong tendency to not get hit much and/or hard, so while his fastball may not get into the mid-90's and he doesn't exactly have an arsenal of out pitches, he's gotten results for a long enough period of time that I wouldn't mind having him on my ballclub.

So, all things being equal, if I had to pick someone to go, it'd be Casilla. However, since he did indeed have spectacular results for the Giants just last season, it comes back to this -- the three of them are equal enough that if we're just talking the 2011 season, none of them are significantly better than the others.