So what if Neal Cotts is the only LOOGY?

There’s been some discussion this offseason and this spring about who the Cubs LOOGY will be. We’ve had the discussions on here. I was hopeful the Cubs would acquire one of Beimel, Shouse or Ohman in the offseason. Neal Cotts isn’t that good a pitcher and you could probably improve over him. That being said, we’re talking about 50 or so innings of work so the importance of a LOOGY is very low. I can’t blame the Cubs for refusing to invest further money in another LOOGY since it’s of such minimal value to the club. In fact, it probably would be a poor decision. The difference between Beimel and Cotts isn’t that much to begin with. The Seattle Mariners are opening the 2009 season without a lefty in their bullpen and MGL talks a little about that here. MGL is responding to an article written by Geoff Baker who says that the no lefty in the pen thing has been done and has been successful before. That certainly doesn’t mean anything as MGL points out, but it does kind of give you an idea of how useless 50 innings of work is. So, really, it doesn’t matter that Neal Cotts it the only LOOGY. He’s not going to get much work and while it would be nice to have a better lefty who can get lefties out, we’re talking about a minimal difference in value. Anyway, one really silly way to debate something like that is by showing us teams that have or have not been successful with no lefties in the pen. The reason, it is a really silly part of the discussion is that the nexus between a team