Oh Fernando Rodney.
Why hast thou forsaken the A’s?
In a very tight Wild Card Game on Wednesday night that had the New York Yankees ahead by two runs to zero against the Oakland Athletics, Rodney was subbed in as the team’s third reliever and fourth overall hurler for Shawn Kelley, who pitched a clean fifth inning to keep the score the same.
Rodney, a 41-year old veteran who has pitched a total of 896 regular-season games in his career, was given the ball by manager Bob Melvin for one job and one job only: to hold the Yankees to just those 2 runs. That sounded pretty simple, right? A player with a multitude of battle scars all over his body through his time in the majors was tasked in doing something he has done for essentially his entire adulthood.
From the get-go in his debut season in 2002, he pitched in relief as the set-up man for the closer. He’d enter at around the seventh or eighth inning, strike a couple or so batters out to pad his stats and let the closer finish the game to take the W for the team. This would go on until 2009, when he was formally given the role of closer after his respective team’s original closer was hampered by injury. He didn’t disappoint in his new role as he picked up 37 saves for the year. Although his ERA was 4.40, it was deemed respectable due to his circumstances.
In total, after playing for ten different teams including the one he’s in, Rodney accumulated 325 saves in his career, which is good for 18th place in the all-time most saves made list in Major League history.
However, it is not about all those saves he made that has defined his career. No no no.
It is all about the blown saves. Along with amassing such a high number for saves made, Rodney has blown 73 save opportunities in his career, which makes up for about 18% of all the saves he could’ve made. To give you an idea of how often he blows it on the mound at the end of any given game in recent years, Rodney has blown seven save opportunities for 2018, which is good for second place in the entire majors. The year before that, in 2017, he blew it six times to end up in fifth place on the leaderboards. Hell, if you go even further back, you would see that he has a streak going on since his first year where he has blown at least two save opportunities per season from then up until now. That makes for 17 years. SEVENTEEN!!
The point here is Rodney can produce when he needs to, but he can be a thorn at times with his inconsistency which can be frustrating for any fan of the team he is currently in to watch. That is why such frustration has been coined as The Fernando Rodney Experience. Its definition is easy for anyone to understand. It’s when the namesake of the term proceeds to falter and blow another save for no apparent reason. Nothing is explained. It just happens. Why does it happen? I dunno. Ask Rodney and he might tell you.
With that said, when Rodney came up to the mound to pitch for the A’s, two scenarios popped up in the minds of baseball fans, players, and personnel. Will he dominate the Yankees with his three pitches (change-up, four-seam fastball and sinker) and prompt the Athletics to mount an improbable comeback in their famous backyard? Or will he collapse under pressure like he is so used to doing throughout his career and give up runs which will effectively end the game right then and there?
