Rafael Dolis is returning to North America after spending four seasons pitching out of the bullpen for the Hanshin Tigers.
He signed a one year deal with the Toronto Blue Jays.
Dolis had spent 10 years in organized ball from 2006 to 2015 before coming to Japan. Most of that time was in the Cubs organization, for whom he made 40 appearances at the major league level between 2011 and 2013. He spent 2014 and 2015 in Triple-A in the San Francisco Giants and Detroit Tigers organizations respectively before signing with Hanshin in January of 2016.
Marcus Mateo, another former Cubs farmhand originally from the Dominican Republic, also joined the Tigers in 2016 and earned the closer spot out of training camp while Dolis was put in a set up role. Mateo developed an injury in mid-May and was sent to the farm team while Dolis was promoted to closer. He earned 8 saves before developing a elbow issue that ended his season at the end of July. He resigned with Hanshin in the middle of training camp in 2017 and ended up beating Mateo out for the closer role. Ultimately he notched 37 saves 2017, most in the Central League. He was the closer again in 2018 and saved 32 games. He started 2019 as the closer but lost the role in mid-season to Kyuji Fujikawa (yet another former Cub pitcher although he's not from the Dominican Republic) and finished the season as a set up guy.
Dolis appears in BBM's 1st Version sets in 2016, 2018 and 2019 (he signed too late to be in the 2017 set), the 2nd Version sets from 2016-19 and the 2017 Fusion set. He made Epoch's NPB set in both 2018 and 2019 (the only two years so far they've done that set) but he only appeared in one Calbee set - 2018. He makes appearances in the comprehensive team sets for the Tigers from both BBM (2016-19) and Epoch (sets were only done in 2018-19). He was also in the
2017 Epoch Tigers team set. Here's a card of him from each year he was in Japan:
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| 2016 BBM 1st Version #227 |
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| 2017 BBM Fusion #122 |
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| 2018 Calbee #120 |
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| 2019 Epoch NPB #411 |
2 comments:
Hey, and he's a former Peoria Chief. Woot!
Wow, it looks like Hanshin has cornered the market on former Cubs bullpen pieces in recent years. Coincidental I'm sure, but crazy nonetheless.
And I didn't even mention Pierce Johnson, yet another ex-Cub recently in the Tigers' bullpen
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