Imaginary Arrows Don’t Win Or Lose Baseball Games

In the wake of an incredible weekend of baseball in Los Angeles, or Anaheim, or somewhere in California, in which the Seattle Mariners lost to the Angels in the bottom of the 16^th one night, turned around and beat the Angels in the 12^th the next night, and then lost a heartbreaker in the 9^th the final day of the series, it’s mildly amusing the scrutiny still being applied a few days later to Fernando Rodney’s imaginary arrow routine in the bottom of the 8^th of Sunday’s game.

To recap briefly, manager Lloyd McClendon brought Rodney in with one out in the eighth inning for what would have been a five out save.  With Efren Navarro on first and one out with a one run lead, Rodney proceeded to strike out Chris Iannetta looking and then get Kole Calhoun to fly out to center.  After Endy Chavez secured the fly ball, Rodney proceeded to do his Green Arrow / Hawkeye / Katniss Everdeen routine (pick your comic hero) and “shoot an arrow” into the Angels’ bullpen.

Perhaps forgetting that it was the 8^th inning and not the 9^th, Rodney then had to come back out to face Mike Trout, who he walked on five pitches, and Albert Pujols, who doubled in Trout to tie the score.  After a strategic exchange of an intentional walk, a double play, and another intentional walk, Grant Green drove in Josh Hamilton to end the game.  Rodney was charged with his third blown save of the season and then the talk began.

The Fiction

Green, the third year player who drove in the winning run, was quoted after the game, saying, “Rodney woke up our dugout. At the time, we were hitting well in the game, but we didn’t have that key hit. He did it at the wrong time with Trout, Pujols and Josh coming up. You don’t want to get those guys fired up.”

Seriously?  So, if Rodney hadn’t shot an imaginary arrow into the Angels’ bullpen Trout would have swung at all those pitches outside the strike zone and not been on first base with a walk?  Pujols, now despondent rather than inspired, wouldn’t have any one to drive in or any reason to seek revenge, so he’d hit weakly to short for a quick out?  And, Hamilton would do what Hamilton does:  strikeout?  The whole ninth inning was rewritten when Rodney pretended to be an archer in the eighth?

The very fact that this absurd narrative of the Angels rallying as a result of being taunted by some silly gesture by Fernando Rodney is proof positive that baseball players and many baseball writers and announcers desperately try to make sense of the random clustering of events that makes baseball the incredible game that it is.

The Facts

Rodney does have a 2.33 ERA and a 2.79 RA9 (runs allowed per nine, which includes unearned runs), so he does allow runs.  It just happens that two of them were in one inning at a fairly inopportune time.

In fact, Rodney has given up only those two runs in the entire month of July.  And, oh, he only gave up two runs in all of June.  And, wait for it; he gave up two runs in the month of May.  In April, he gave up six runs in four of his appearances, but one of those was still a save, against Texas on April 25^th.

The Mariners are 4-5 in games in which Fernando Rodney gives up a run, meaning it’s just about as likely that the Rodney charged runs make no difference whatsoever to the outcome (thank the ridiculous save rule for that) as it is that they have the potential to be attached to a narrative.  Remember the hysteria over Rodney’s performance back in April?

I, for one, have been at a bit of a loss to explain Rodney’s late career transformation.  For the majority of his career, he’s been a league average of lower pitcher.  He has seven seasons with an ERA over 4 and only three seasons with an ERA under 3.  It’s just that two of those three seasons are this year and two years ago in Tampa, his age 37 and 35 seasons respectively.  The other sub 3 ERA was in 2005 with Detroit.

Usually, any significant improvement in performance, especially late in a career, is the result of changing something.  A hitter may change his approach at the plate.  A pitcher may add a pitch.  Rodney actually stopped throwing the slider all together after 2012, but he’s always been primarily a fastball / changeup type pitcher.

The only logical explanation points to April 16, 2012, when, after getting a save for the Rays, he debuted the imaginary arrow routine.  I’ll leave it for another columnist to plot Rodney’s pre-arrow and post arrow performance.  I’ll just enjoy the fact that no two baseball games are ever the same.