In a historic 2008 season, Francisco Rodriguez, or "K-Rod" broke the save record with 62 saves. If you don't follow baseball very closely, you would say "Shell out Mariano money, he's the best!" But let's take a look see at the stats this season.
Saves
1) K-Rod - 62
2) Valverde - 44
3) Soria - 42
T-4) Lidge - 41
T-4) Papelbon - 41
T-4) Wilson - 41
Good for him. You know what that means? He got the most save chances. If we are going by saves, Brian Wilson is one of the best closers in the league. Yea, the guy with the 4.62 ERA who squeaked out his saves all season.
Here is the freaky stat: K-Rod blew 7 saves this season. He could have had 69 saves if he had a season to Lidge, or even 67-68 if he could have had a season like Soria or Rivera, who are clearly better than them.
K-Rod also had one of the highest WHIPs among closers this season at 1.29. He saw his fastball drop from 97 MPH to 92 MPH, insane for a player who is only 26, and who has that violent of a delivery, it may be catching up to him. His agent, Paul Kinzer, said that K-Rod dropped his velocity to improve his control - so how does that explain his BB/9 ONLY dropping from 4.54 to 4.48, still an outrageous number for a closer. It does explain his K/9 dropping by nearly 2 full points. K-Rod is in a fast decline, and his numbers are getting worse every year. The guy still has greet stuff, but is an injury waiting to happen, and has never walked less than 3.5 BB/9 in a season - a number that is only going up.
Whatever team signs K-Rod will regret even the 4 year deal they give him. He will never be the kind of player he was when he came up to the bigs in '02.
I cannot emphsize this enough - K-Rod is not a bad closer. He simply is not worth, or even close to worth the 10 mil. he is going to get.
Oh, and I say the Mets - 4 yrs. 44 mil.
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