Papelbon - 1.61 ERA, 75 K/15 walks, .77 WHIP Dempster - 3.88 ERA, 48K/27 walks, 1.28 WHIP. But hey, at least his performance in situations arbitrarily defined by a meaningless statistic is only marginally worse than Papelbons! (Also, let's not mention the two tie games he entered and singlehandedly let get out of reach) no ones saying dempster is as good as papelbon. (Demps ERA is over-represented by the two bad outings). The thing is Dempsters gotten the job done and most of the time out there hes been a quality closer. For a team thats hovering around .500, a spot where the team has been perfectly fine and above average is not the issue. Even when it cost them a game. Sure, he hasn't been Saito-esque, Valverde-esque, Papelbon-esque....but he's been rock solid. If you take out his 3-4 horrible outings, his ERA is likely well under 3....probably closer to 2.