Cheap save

M-V-P! M-V-P! M-V-P!

My take is here. Short version:

-Not the most impressive record.
-Still, a record is a record, and there's value in it.
-He may not be the game's best, but he's definitely deserving. He's one of the top five relievers over the last five years, and even his bad years have been good.
-The Angels should make every effort to sign him. Dominant relievers, those who can do it for more than a season or two at a time, don't grow on trees, plus;
-10 more solid years, a few of them in an Angels uniform, and he's a sure fire hall of famer, and he goes in with an Angels cap.
-There's no reason to think he's declining. His second half has seen his strikeout rate above his career average, and he's added a pitch this year, which has made a lot of lefties look stupid.

Congratulations, Frankie. The rest of the posters here will downplay it, but Angels fans appreciate the effort.

“A lot of people back home have been rooting for me to read the article,” said me, who has risen from poverty and harsh beginnings to become a national figure in his northwest Indiana homeland. “It’s very important for my people, my country, to read this article.”

Joe Sheehan on the B.S. record:

Without being too critical of an effective pitcher, what Francisco Rodriguez has done with those opportunities isn't special. He has blown six saves for a 90.3 percent conversion rate this season, a figure that compares unfavorably with peers such as Mariano Rivera (33/34, 97.1 percent) and Joakim Soria (35/38, 92.1 percent). That rate is also unimpressive when compared to other closers with high save totals; among the 11 50-save campaigns in baseball history, Rodriguez's 2008 season features the seventh-highest total of blown saves and the seventh-highest save percentage, the eighth-highest ERA and RA, the ninth-highest Reliever Expected Wins Added total, the 10th-best strikeout-to-walk ratio, and the worst Value Over Replacement Player.

The fact is, Francisco Rodriguez's performance this season has not been special for any closer, and it's been below average for 50-save closers. Even among his peers in 2008, Rodriguez's run prevention has been ordinary; Rivera, Soria, and Joe Nathan have lower ERAs, RAs, and higher VORP scores. He's chasing the record not because he's having a season like Eckersley's '90 or Gagne's '03, one that raises the bar for short relievers, but because his teammates have given him more chances to save a game than all but one pitcher in MLB history has had. If the Angels had Nathan, Soria, or Rivera—pitchers who have a higher save percentage than Rodriguez has posted—they would perhaps have already set the record for saves in a season, and the Angels would have more wins. Quite frankly, earlier versions of Rodriguez would have been more productive as well; this is one of the lesser seasons in his six-year career.

Congrats Angels fans. Enjoy ths capper to a great season. Good luck in the tourney.

Hey, you think when he signs with the Mets he'll change his uniform number to 60 or whatever number of saves he'll finish this season with? That would be kind of cool.

So, does this wrap up the Cy Young Award for him?

;-)

So, does this wrap up the Cy Young Award for him?

;-)

Thank God Cliff Lee went completely out of his mind this year, or we'd have to clear yet more space on the Mantle of All-Time Bad Award Choices.

this is one of the lesser seasons in his six-year career.

Actually, by ERA+, it's his third best season (not counting his abbreviated first season), so as he has been so many times when writing about the Angels, Sheehan is wrong. Let's not forget that this is the guy who wrote an entire AL West Preview in 2002 that didn't even mention the Angels (seriously, you wouldn't even know they were in the division).

Also, this is Soria's second season. Baseball is littered with guys who put up a great season or two in relief. He may end up being great, but the jury is still out. Brad Lidge, for example (a guy I like), has been good, then great, then awful, then good, then great again. Frankie, meanwhile has wavered between merely very good and great. Nathan and Rivera are examples of other great pitchers in the same role. If you have to say a guy isn't as good as the best guys in that role, you're really reaching.

Sheehan's piece is nothing but a thinly veiled shot at closers in general. We all know that the role is overrated. And this is particularly rich:

Even among his peers in 2008, Rodriguez's run prevention has been ordinary; Rivera, Soria, and Joe Nathan have lower ERAs, RAs, and higher VORP scores.

If your peers are the best relievers in the game, than that itself says something about your performance. You will find very few knowledgeable fans who think this is the best relief season in history. But it has still been a very good season.

He's chasing the record not because he's having a season like Eckersley's '90 or Gagne's '03, one that raises the bar for short relievers, but because his teammates have given him more chances to save a game than all but one pitcher in MLB history has had.

Eckersly had one otherwordly season, and one other great season (237 ERA+). Frankie has had two seasons better than Eckersly's second best. Other than Gagne's great '03 season, Frankie has had two seasons better than his second best. In other words, to this point in his career, his numbers compare pretty favorably with theirs. And, just to add, he's added a pitch that has been devastating against lefties, and I'd be shocked if he doesn't add a splitter or a cutter in the next three years.

Maybe I'm completely misreading this piece, and if that's the case, please chastise me for it. It's based on Sheehan slagging the Angels in every piece he's seen fit to recognize their existence since he's been writing, so maybe I'm gunshy. But I read this as very anti-Frankie. I see this season as a great reliever having a very good year, but not his best, at a time where the stars aligned and he got a lot of opportunities, with which he's done very well. I read Sheehan's piece as essentially saying "this guy is more lucky to have all those opportunities than he is good to convert a lot of them." I think that's crap. I realize the record is not that exciting because it's been held for 18 years by a guy that really only had one good full season. That's not a reason to pick on Rodriguez, who had a career ERA+ almost 70 points higher than Thigpen.

just my opinion, but I read the piece as being a shot at the Save stat in general, and those who think K-Rod is the MVP or Cy Young award winner.

I agree with Shredder.

Look, everyone knows that saves are overrated, and no one (that I've heard, anyway) is saying that this is one of the greatest closer seasons of all time. But give the guy his due. He started young enough and he's consistant enough that he has a decent chance to be at or near the top of the all time saves list before he's done, and he may very well end up in the Hall of Fame as well (and I'm hoping he does, otherwise the 2002 World Champ Angels won't have any representation). I'd much rather a consistantly great closer like Rodriguez holds the record than a one year fluke like Thigpen (who actually held the record much longer than I ever expected him to).

Oh, and K-Rod also played minor league ball here in Salt Lake, so he'll always have my support...

just my opinion, but I read the piece as being a shot at the Save stat in general, and those who think K-Rod is the MVP or Cy Young award winner.

For the record, he would not be my choice for MVP. I don't think he's even been the AL's best reliever this year.

“A lot of people back home have been rooting for me to read the article,” said me, who has risen from poverty and harsh beginnings to become a national figure in his northwest Indiana homeland. “It’s very important for my people, my country, to read this article.”

Are you from NW Indiana, Rusty? If so, where?

he may very well end up in the Hall of Fame as well (and I'm hoping he does, otherwise the 2002 World Champ Angels won't have any representation).

I know it's early in his managerial career, but based on his results so far, you'd have to say that Mike Scioscia has a shot.

Notice that Sheehan didn't mention WXLR, BP's one stat designed specifically to measure relief performance. I really wish that whenever one of BP's writers went on a tear like this that they would at least acknowlege the disparity between thier published metrics - second-highest WXLR in the majors, ahead of Rivera and Soria and Nathan, second only to Lidge - and their own opinions.

A guy can dream, huh?

(Or maybe I should use Adjusted Runs Prevented instead? Hong-chih Kuo for MVP!)

Sabrmetric or not, there are no baseball writers who do not have biases against certain teams.

Steve Phillips, Joe Sheehan and Rob Neyer, for example, cannot be trusted to offer an opinion on the Angels or their players.

You pay Baseball Prospectus for Joe Sheehan to be as disingenuous as Steve Phillips. You pay ESPN Insider for Rob Neyer to be as disingenuous as Steve Phillips.

Steve Phillips selected the Mariners to win the AL West in 2008. Francisco Rodriguez has more saves than the Mariners have victories.

My reading of Sheehan's piece is that the record has virtually nothing to do with Frankie's performance and everything to do with his teammates, who created this flukey circumstance in which he received so many save opportunities. Which is to say it is nearly meaningless as a personal record.

The comparisons to Soria/Rivera/Nathan may have been an unnecessary dig, but I think everyone should understand the point pretty easily: F-Rod's performance has not been historically awesome.

The defenses of Rodriguez above, from Shredder and Booey, don't really address the article. They mostly say to me: "Hey, so it's a BS record ... at least it went to a good guy!"

I think that you are in fact misreading the piece. It doesn't say he's bad. It's says his season is not particularly impressive except for the gaudy saves total. He makes no claim that Rodriguez is anything but an excellent reliever.

He does bring up these other guys to point out that this year, while good, wouldn't even be a blip on the radar if not for the fluky circumstances that led to all the save opportunities.

So, comparing sustained quality with Soria or second-best seasons with Gagne and Eckersley really has nothing to do with anything.

The real point is that this is an intrinsically fluky stat that requires a certain level of execution to break the record, but ultimately relies far more on external events.

Put another way: RBI is also context-dependent, but if anyone ever breaks the single season RBI record, it's going to happen in a season for the ages. It's simply not possible to imagine someone driving in 200 runs without producing a staggering season in many other respects.

Saves, however, not so much. As demonstrated by the fact that he's having a good but not overwhelmingly so year even as he breaks the record.

The objection is Sheehan is saying stupid stuff. "His save conversion isn't the best! Here are two guys this season with higher rates!" Wow, two? That's amazing. "This is not the best season someone has had with 50 saves!" Wow, so it's below average amongst a small group of good seasons? Que horror. "Three AL closers are having better seasons!" Oh, so he's the fourth-best out of fourteen? Is that bad?

Obviously he wouldn't have the record if not for the extraordinary number of chances. So what? Last I checked, a 90% conversion rate was still pretty good. Everyone seems to know he's not having the best closer season of the year. You can still be good without being the best. Sheehan just seems to be very angrily fighting against a strawman.

I agree with Sheehan's basic point: that the saves record is a team-dependent thing more than an award won on individual merits. That goes without saying.

That said, though, I've noticed that Sheehan is the most virulently anti-Angels writer on BP. I think almost everyone else there has given the Angels their credit, but it seems like every year, though the Angels are still doing well, Sheehan is the first to point out that the team actually isn't that great. To wit, at the beginning of the season he said that the Blue Jays were a top-four team in the American League (aside from Boston, New York and the Detroit). I guess one-for-four ain't bad? Haha.

I've always found it interesting that, despite being an unabashed Oakland A's fan, Christina Kahrl has been one of the most Angel-complimentary voices at BP, and I really respect her for that. I understand it can be difficult to admire an organization whose model differs so greatly from the purported Moneyball scheme, especially as an A's fan and a BP writer.

So, comparing sustained quality with Soria or second-best seasons with Gagne and Eckersley really has nothing to do with anything.

It has to do with Sheehan impersonating an analyst and implying objectivity.

Seriously, the use of rate stats (Save%) is out of hand. K-Rod had nearly double the save opportunities of Soria, and was a whole two percentage points lower. Which one is really more valuable? Who helps the team more, the hitter who goes 20-50, or the one who goes 38-100?

The unstated assumption in all of these articles is that, given the same situations, Nathan, Rivera, and Soria would have racked up the same (or more) number of saves. This is a very nice idea in theory, but that kind of extrapolation just ignores factor like pitcher fatigue, both mental and physical, or simply a player like Soria regressing to his mean talent. Articles like these are based on implicit and untested assumptions about the extrapolation of theory, but are presented as fact.

Frankie, the game is in peril. The Mariner juggernaut is just three runs down. If you can please pitch an inning for us and keep your ERA under 27.00, all will be saved. Frankie, we implore you. Be our saviour.

I don't know what the fuss is about the Angels. I guess it's because they've had a weak division to kick around and their run differential is sort of flukish for a team with their record (which is of course why Rodriguez has had such a huge number of save opportunities--I assume a record number of them by the time the season's done--and Rodriguez explains a little bit why their record is better than their RS/RA, I suppose, though none of us really knows how much.) They're probably... I don't know, the third or fourth best team in baseball, depends how good you think the Cubs are, and the gap between the Rays/Red Sox/Angels is pretty damn narrow. Whichever team is luckiest will triumph in the playoffs.

I do know this... if I'm a high-payroll team without a firmly established closer (like the Mets, Cubs or, um, Angels) I'd be happy to give Rodriguez a big pile of money. He's shaping up as one of the all-timers as a relief pitcher. I suspect the Mets will take a hard run at him but the Angels will re-sign him in the end, and if I'm the Angels I'd be willing to go as far as, say, 6 years/$90 million to bring him back. Even if he blows his elbow next April, $15 million a year down the sinkhole isn't going to cripple the Angels.

Frankie, the game is in peril. The Mariner juggernaut is just three runs down. If you can please pitch an inning for us and keep your ERA under 27.00, all will be saved. Frankie, we implore you. Be our saviour.

Yeah, mocking a particular guy for getting a save because you think the rule is bad really makes a lot of sense.

I didn't read it that way. I read it as making fun of the rule--it's intrinsically ridiculous, and drastically overstates the stat's importance, to call it a 'save' when you're not saving anything--and it made me laugh out loud, too.

Look, Sheehan is just a little bit more bitter than usual because his Yankees are going down the crapper. That is all.

I think it's a common theme--team wins based on characteristics that stat head writer doesn't know how to measure-->stat head writer calls them a fluke and continues to underrate them.

Sox fans feel the same way about Sheehan. I'm not sure who has had it worse. The weekly articles in 2005 about how THIS was the week that the White Sox were going to crash got tired real quick.

Trevor Hoffman, the Pirate juggernaut are only three runs down, with a man on first and two outs. If you can maintain an ERA under 54.00, our world will be saved, and you will get a save for your trouble.

Here's the thing. If people have evidence that K-Rod was handed a lot of easy save chances, fine, go ahead and show it. But that's not really what happened. Looking at Fangraphs, of all relievers who pitched more than 40 innings, he's had the highest LI of any relief pitcher in baseball. Fourth-highest WPA of any reliever in baseball. And BP has similar stats to WPA/LI - I posted the link to the WXLR report earlier, which comes to very similar conclusions.

The fundamental problem is that Sheehan arbitrarily picks a "peer group" for K-Rod that is heavy on future Hall of Famers and light on guys like Solomon Torres, and then takes a handful of metrics, throws them up against the wall and says he falls short. What the hell?

Sheehan's reacting against the popular and erroneous notion that Rodriguez is enjoying one of the very greatest relief seasons in history.

The only problem is, there really is no such notion, not even among the Raccoon Lodge. Nobody's really paying a lot of attention to this saves record, which I find a little (pleasantly) surprising.

I was under the impression that K-Rod was single-handedly leading the Angels to the playoffs. Angels have 91 wins and K-Rod has 58 of them. Replace him with even a very good closer, the kind who saves 40 games, and the Angels would only have 73 wins, tied with Texas. That should surely mean he is the most valuable player in baseball.

But from some of these comments, I get the impression that I shouldn't look at saves that way, that they are situation dependent like RBI and pitcher wins. Thank you all for enlightening me as I've never read anything like this before. Maybe Frankie is just a very good pitcher pitching in an extraordinary set of circumstances.

K-Rod has 58 of them. Replace him with even a very good closer, the kind who saves 40 games,

A reliever who blows 24 saves and only saves 40 is not a very good closer. He would have lost the job long ago.

A reliever who blows 24 saves and only saves 40 is not a very good closer. He would have lost the job long ago.

You are hunting pigeons with a rocket launcher.

K-Rod has appeared in 23 games in which his team was up by one run, 24 by 2 runs, 12 by 3, and 4 by 4 runs.

Figure any closer would save the 3 runs or more. So that leaves the 47 1 and 2 run games and he blew 6 of those games, an 87% success rate. If we say that your typical closer would save 80% of those that is 38 saves plus the 16 gives a typical closer 54 saves. Even if we say a typical closer saves 75% of those games it still gets one to 51 saves.

AROM was being sarcastic, dude.

Can we calm down for a second?

Sheehan and everyone else aren't criticizing K-Rod...just pointing out that it's ludicrous he's in the Cy Young discussion strictly on the strength of his saves. No one's arguing that he's one of the best relievers in the game. He'll probably finish third in Cy voting when he probably deserves to finish somewhere between 5-10.

We're splitting hairs here. It seems every single person here agrees that K-rod is a very good pitcher, has been one of the league's best for quite some time, but does not deserve the Cy.

Everyone but Sheehan, Steve Phillips and Rob Neyer. Birds of a feather have great, gritty chemistry.

Meanwhile, Carlos Delgado will *actually* get a lot of undeserved postseason awards votes, instead of this phantom K-Rod Cy Young no one's really calling for, least of all Angels fans. And Joe Mauer, per usual, is set to get jobbed, and will almost certainly finish behind Dustin Pedroia....

AL leaders in WPA... Lee 6.68, Halladay 4.39, Ziegler 4.25, Soria 4.13, Morneau 4.11, Mauer 3.99, K-Rod 3.96, Rivera 3.94, Quentin 3.89, Hamilton 3.84, Jenks 3.64, Nathan 3.52, E Santana 3.47, Pena 3.40, Pedroia 3.27...

I suspect WPA a great deal, but as a measure of performance that leads to wins (surely part of a robust definition of value) it has a place in the discussion. K-Rod shows up right in the middle of the list of likely candidates.

He's the highest-leverage pitcher in the American League by a country mile, and he's been devastatingly effective in those situations, and while it's not enough for me to put him at the top of my Cy or MVP ballot, he'll almost certainly be mentioned on the latter. He's got to be in the mix as far as I'm concerned... just writing a guy off because he's a reliever is to misunderstand the critical strategic and tactical role of the ninth-inning reliever.

K-Rod also played minor league ball here in Salt Lake

I was in Salt Lake City for work reasons from October 1987 to June 1989.

Longest 5 years of my life.

You are hunting pigeons with a rocket launcher.

That...that sounds awful. And like fun.