POTD Fernando Rodney
With SSI, every day is a no-brainer

.

Re-time-stamped from Jan. 28, then reverted.  - jeff

.

Q.  Why this POTD?

A.  MLB Tonight, after Jon Heyman, just had five minutes on the Seattle Mariners and Fernando Rodney.  Supposed to be very possible, if not exactly imminent.

.

Q.  Any particular reasons it might have legs?

A.  Here is a post to the effect that Rodney likes Lloyd McClendon.  Here's a second source from today, billowing smoke which might indicate an underlying fire.

.

Q.  Does Dr. D want Rodney?

A.  Of course.  He is NOT the best closer in the game, and he's in the "white knuckle" category.  But he is a Legit Closer, and that pushes everybody else in the 'pen down by one slot.  Those Farquahars and Furbushes wouldn't have to punch above their weight classes.

.

Q.  Is Rodney good?  How good?

A.  Think of him as Tom Wilhelmsen on a good day - Wilhemsen, if he were steel-tempered and not subject to catastrophe.

  • Same downhill, exploding fastballs that touch 100 MPH
  • Same over-the-top offspeed pitches that are like hitting fireflies with willow switches; Wilhelmsen throws the big yakker vis-a-vis Rodney's devastating forkball
  • Same wildness ... though Rodney is age 37 and no longer prone to complete self-detonations on the mound
  • OPPOSITE confidence factors

.

Q.  Is his forkball really that good?

A.  Here's a video.  Anything else?

.

Q.  The fastball is 100% as good as Wilhelmsen's?

A.  Here's a video.  Anything else?

.

Q.  Is a 100-MPH fastball, and Sasaki forkball, an appropriate pitch arsenal on a closer?

A. .....

.

Q.  What does he want?

A.  He's 37 ... he wants max years, you can be sure.  Does that mean three years?  I dunno.  In any case, he is a "bridge" reliever until that Zduriencik talent starts snowballing...

You would think anybody would give Rodney the 2 years x $8M that is reported.  How do you win that bidding?  Third year vested?  No idea.

.

Q.  What happened in 2012?

A.  That was the year that Rodney's walks dropped from 5 a game to 1+ a game, and he allowed 5 runs all year.  An 0.60 ERA.

This is not like the case with Ubaldo Jimenez.  There's some reasonable chance that Rodney could find his release point again and reprise 2012.  Just because he's so old, and has been pitching so long.

.

Q.  So is his arm doing, at that age?

A.  In 2013, he threw harder than he ever has in his career.  As a setup guy with the Tigers he used to average in the 93's... then a few years ago it was 95's ... now he is at 96.5 MPH average velocity.  That's what Randy Johnson would have averaged in his best year.

I dunno ... a lot of closers talk about the adrenaline that comes with the 9th inning.  :: shrug ::

.

Q.  No-brainer?

A.  Supposing you gave him 3/$21M.  What's the extra $7M, in view of the Cano contract?  You're not talking risk here, not if you're talking with any sense of scale.  You're talking pennies against dollars.  

Worst thing in the world here would be to get caught up in $16M vs $18M vs $20M.  You just bought Cano and stated that you want to Win Now.  You've got the #4 TV deal in baseball, you've got a closer you can grab on a 2- or 3-year deal.  Why would two bucks be the pivot point?

My $0.02,

Dr D

 

Blog: 

Comments

1

I knew some people, call them the Joneses, who had a cat that disappeared.  Nearby the house where the cat dissappeared, lived two bald eagles in a nest made out of sticks.  A large bald eagle has a capacity to lift anything that is about ten pounds.  Bald eagles can and do kill things larger than ten pounds and then butcher the carcass into chunks that they can fly with.  Bald eagles, though preferring fish, eat cats, ducks, and sea gulls when fishing is slow and they fall on hard times.  The longstanding assumption with the Jones' cat was that the eagles caught it unawares, and fed it to their chick.  

In Alaska, in rural areas, it is customary for homeowners to collect rainwater from their roof into cisterns that are either attached to the house or under the house and built into the foundation.  In due time, the Joneses' drinking water which came from their cistern, which was usually crystal clean, (a main benefit of living in Alaska), begain to taste like the water in Dallas or LA.  One day, Mr. Jones checked his under house cistern for routine maintenance, and found his missing cat.  It had evidently fallen into the cistern and drowned, and had been been putrefacting therein for several months, and he and his family had been drinking it.  True story.
The point of this story, if there is one, is that Fernando Rodney's stuff is rotted cat in your drinking water nasty. A player of his ilk would be transformative to this bullpen.  The last time the Mariners were a good team, they had three closers, Rhodes, Nelson and Sasaki, with each being nastier than the next.  If you made it through Rhodes' fastball, then you had Nellie's frisbee slider, and if you made it through his slider, then you had The Thang, a truly unhittable forkball at the end of the line.  The 2004 Angels enjoyed a similar situation with Shields, K-Rod and Percival.  Having three legitimate closers does wonders for everything, and all good teams should aspire to acheive this.  It seems like all of the good teams do aspire to achieve this.
I suspect that when a bullpen is three closer nasty, then the batters show signs of stress if they haven't scored their runs by the middle innings.  This can make the starters more effective.  Batters think something along the following line:  "I better try to swing for the fences rather than trying to draw a walk.  We need runs now, and being passive will not get us there.  Also, we don't want to knock the starter out of the game, because the bullpen will come in and we will be even worse off".  At least that's what I think they think.  
With Wilhelmson, Farquhar and Rodney, you have achieved a state of three closer nasty.  This is a near perfected state of baseball being.  
 
 

2

That post is memorable for all the wrong reasons, Mojo.  Some things you can't unread...
Still, Rodney comes here, on SSI we've got a nickname, at least.
.........
Good stuff on the 'pen.  Gillick's take was very similar to yours:  "Lou can use Sasaki and Rhodes one night, and Mesa and Nelson the next night."  In Gillick's mind, if you have FOUR good relievers, you've got the series goin' in good shape.  This is quite a bit different from Wedge's one-batter-at-a-time use of 6, 7 guys.
I wonder who, hypothetically, would emerge as those 4 relievers...

5

Figured there was some kind of glitch :)
Long story short, what I had written earlier was that I was surprised we had traded our best BB/9 guy from the pen in Capps. Not surprised we traded him, but surprised when I looked and saw his 3.5 was our lowest. Not going to count Beavan as he never pitches in key situations. So many 4-5 walk guys give the end of the game such an unstable feel. Rodney wouldn't help the matter any but I'd welcome his overall effectiveness with open arms. Can this pen really work with a control meltdown lurking at each pitching change? With an improved rotation guess I'll be on the edge of my seat all year long. Better than fast asleep :)

Add comment

Filtered HTML

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd><p><br>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

shout_filter

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.