This season, Francisco Rodriguez is 3-2 with a 2.68 ERA with a league-leading 38 games finished, and 21 saves in 27 opportunities.
Overall, since joining the Mets last year, Rodriguez has blown 19% of his save opportunities, compared to 14% during his entire career with the Angels. Of course, I think we can all agree he deserves a mulligan at the expense of Luis Castillo from his first blown save.
Overall, his velocity is down from years past, but I think one of his biggest problems has been inconsistent command of his assortment of pitches, which leads to him falling behind in the count too much, walking guys and stretching the Mets ability to win games to the absolute limit.
I think another problem he has is he lets his emotions get the best of him, and we’ve learned time and time again that a pitcher cannot let emotions, in particular negative ones, take over while he is pitching.
Yesterday was a prime example of this, and it essentially cost the Mets the game if not for a blown call by home plate umpire Phil Cuzzi.
Now, by no means did Rodriguez even call for such a response from Cuzzi on that blown strike call. Cuzzi’s behavior was out of line, unprofessional, and unjustified. But, as I said yesterday on MetsBlog, Rodriguez’s behavior was also inappropriate only because, like I said before, he cannot get so emotional to the point he loses focus, and that is what happened yesterday and it almost cost the Mets a win they could not afford to let slip away.
I love Rodriguez’s passion. He is fun to watch, especially when he is successful, and he cares very much about winning. That said, if he is going to be part of the solution going forward, I believe, in the example from yesterday, he has to be able to turn around, walk away, regroup, and refocus his energy towards pitching, and not how poor the umpire’s strike zone is.
If only it was so simple.
