You’re paying for Rodriguez’ services, if he’s going to use his irrelevant save totals and track record to get however much he wants you better know you’re getting the high performance K-Rod and if he’s on a downward trend you really shouldn’t pay him.

1. That doesn’t explain the downward trend over the past few years.
2. A batter didn’t recognize a new pitch from a seasoned pitcher? Why am I not surprised?

and something like xFIP is a good way to do that.

problems with xFIP, however, include the fact that it assumes the same HR/FB rate for all pitchers, which isn’t exactly true; and that relievers are able to post slightly lower BABIP rates.

K-Rod has allowed almost as many baserunners in 50 fewer inning this season.

but you’re right that it’s a deceivingly convenient cut-off. I’m not sure Peter’s overall point that KRod’s peripherals are generally declining over the past few seasons. It’s also fair to point out the injury he fought through earlier in the year — that doesn’t make his season any better, but it does brighten the outlook for the future.

All I can think of is “motherfucker, if the other team was smart enough to never swing ever you’d blow every save by walking the god damn world” K-Rod is one of my top 5 most hated players of all time.

“I do not believe that pitchers have shown the aptitude to "pitch to the score” – unless, perhaps, the score is extremely lopsided. If your team is ahead by three runs, you aren’t grooving every fastball right down the middle – three runs is still a close game."

I don’t know about pitchers in general, but I do know that Frankie Rodriguez does change how he pitches based on the score. You don’t have to do anything accept look at his game log to know that. When does K-Rod tend to give up runs? When the lead is more than 1. Of his 5 blown saves, only 1 has come in a 1-run game, and he’s only given up the losing run in a tied game once. This out of 11 games where a run has scored while he is on the mound.

And it’s not like he hasn’t had chances to blow 1-run leads- 24 of his 65 appearances have come with either a one run lead or with the game tied. This is because K-Rod is more likely to come after guys in situations where he has more of a cushion.

As for his ankle injury and the addition of a changeup to his repertoire: the ankle injury could indeed be dragging his numbers down, but his velocity on September 2 was almost exactly the same as his velocity on April 2, according to Brooksbaseball . Yes, his K/BB ratio was amazing in August, but I don’t necessarily consider that an upward trend – especially since it hasn’t been accompanied by increased velocity – so much as a small-sample-size fluke (to be fair, his 9/9 ratio in April was just as much of a fluke; the truth lies somewhere in the middle). I don’t think his struggles can be blamed at all on the ankle injury.

Except that the average fastball speed that Brooks Baseball claims for him is 92.9 on both dates, which would be perfectly consistent with a 92-94 MPH fastball, as opposed to the 91.8 average speed claimed by fangraphs. Also, the big ankle injury for K-Rod came on April 6th when he fell down the dugout steps, just prior to his outing on April 7th where Cleveland lit him up. His average fastball speed on that day was 91.5. When he came back, he initially looked okay, averaging 92.47 on the 13th, but fell to 91.15 and then to 90.98 on the following two days, followed by 91.86 on the 17th. On the 18th he ratcheted it back up to 92.8. It hit sub-91 one more time on the 25th and I don’t think it has done so since.

I think based on this it’s fair to say that his injury was affecting him, at least in April. After that of course, his K and BB rates started to normalize, culminating in a really good month in August.

As far as “struggles” though, I’m not sure I’ve seen any, post-April. He really only had the one bad month, and after that it’s been business as usual.

I also don’t see how this season is worse than ‘03 at the very least. You’ll have to explain that one.