On Wednesday, after Rodney allowed a game-tying home run to Jose Bautista, Joe Maddon quickly removed him from the game, a clear step in the right direction. But after the game, Maddon continued to show confidence in Rodney and refused to even consider removing him from the closer role. It’s good to trust your guys, but at this point doesn’t Maddon’s faith defy reason and border on idealism based on Rodney’s only great season in his entire career last season? Maddon knows that removing Rodney from the closer role would be a major blow to his confidence and Maddon doesn’t want to do that. But isn’t he managing a team here, not individual players? The Rays are losing way too many games for no other reason besides the fact that Rodney and Farnsworth can’t get anybody out. Why not at least try Joel Peralta in a few save situations and see if you can make something happen in a bullpen that has collectively fallen of a cliff?

One of the biggest parts of the problem is that whenever Rodney and Farnsworth take the mound, you see their velocity readings and it’s clear that they still have something in the tank. They’re not locating their pitches right now, but their stuff is so good that Maddon will keep believing in them. If you ask him why, Maddon will immediately cite the example of Jake McGee, whose seasonal numbers are undeniably horrific but who also has not allowed a run or even a hit in his last six appearances, allowing a walk in only one of the six as well. Another manager would have lost patience with a pitcher like McGee and never have reaped the rewards of his turnaround. But aren’t the chances of McGee, Rodney, and Farnsworth all having turnarounds about the chances of you or I winning the lottery? Sometimes struggles are a temporary thing, sometimes they’re something that you can never escape. You can say a similar thing about success–sometimes it’s just related to luck and sometimes it’s indicative of a real breakthrough. After how successful Rodney was last year, you have to give him the benefit of the doubt, but continuing to use him as a closer when he’s pitching like this is ridiculous. For Farnsworth, though, he hasn’t pitched well since 2011. How long of a leash will he have?

Joe Maddon is a great manager who gets the most out of his players year after year without fail. But maybe this year, he’s taking his belief in his players to nonsensical proportions and costing his team dearly in the process. In the case of McGee, Maddon was right to stay patient when all of us had reached a tipping pont. But how much more time can pass before Maddon does something with Rodney and Farnsworth?

No one on the Rays thought that Kyle Farnsworth in 2011 or Fernando Rodney in 2012 would be nearly as good as they actually were. In both cases, the Rays were hedging their bets on two things: Farnsworth and Rodney’s stuff and the general variability of relievers. Even as Farnsworth and Rodney struggled in the seasons before they arrived in Tampa Bay, their arsenals were still electric, with fastballs reaching the mid-90′s or higher and an overbearing secondary pitches (slider for Farnsworth, changeup for Rodney). The Rays knew that both pitchers had something to work with, and they handed them over to Jim Hickey hoping he could help them improve their control and command and turn themselves around. Beyond that, they had both achieved success in the past, and even though they hadn’t pitched well in more recent years, relievers’ performances fluctuate so significantly, and with great stuff and relative health, they have been due for a bounce-back season. But then the Rays made a serious mistake: retaining them and believing that they had really broken through.

When a reliever pitches well, your natural instinct is to re-sign him hoping that he could continue being part of your bullpen for years to come. The issue with pitchers like Farnsworth and Rodney, though, was that they weren’t young pitchers continuing to develop or anything along those lines. They had managed one great season, and no matter how dominant they looked, that season had to be looked at as an outlier. With cheap team options worth $3.3 million for Farnsworth and $2.5 million for Rodney, the Rays basically had to exercise them, and when Farnsworth was willing to return to the Rays for just $1.25 million this past offseason, the same logic certainly applied. But bringing them back when squarely against the logic that caused the Rays to sign them in the first place, the inconsistent performance of relievers from season to season. With the Rays bringing them back, they were exposing themselves to the possibility that they were teeter back towards their bad side and collapse again.

Why were Farnsworth and Rodney any different from say Joel Peralta, who the Rays re-signed this offseason? Peralta pitched excellently in 2010 for the Washington Nationals before he arrived in Tampa Bay and was great the last two years for the Rays, giving them sufficient evidence that he was reliable enough to sign to a long-term deal at a team-friendly cost. Farnsworth had been decent the year before between Kansas City and Atlanta, but his 2011 season was his first good year since 2005, and in Rodney’s case, he had never really been that great before 2012, managing a 4.40 ERA even as he saved 37 games in 2009. With the opportunity to retain Farnsworth and Rodney in front of them, the Rays would have looked foolish to let them hit free agency. At the same time, though, even as they brought them back, they couldn’t marry themselves to the idea that they were as good as their breakout seasons in a Rays uniform. You sign players to low-cost deals first and foremost because it saves you money and gives you a chance to get incredible value at a fraction of the market price, but secondarily because it gives you the option to demote or release the players if they don’t perform. Rodney was coming back, but he’s struggling now. The Rays don’t have to keep him as closer because of his price tag or anything like that. Joe Maddon and the Rays have fallen into the trap of trusting players like Farnsworth and Rodney too much because of their one great year.

If the Rays had been lucky, then Rodney’s 2012 breakthrough would have been real and he would have been a dominant closer for a second straight year. However, they were not so fortunate and have to accept reality, move Rodney into a lesser bullpen role for the time being, and see what value if any they can extract from him. The Rays have been so successful at building their bullpen because they have removed sentimentality from the equation and have been willing to find strong values on the market even though no matter how well they performed, they were not going to be around for the long-term. Now, they’re going squarely against that, with Maddon showing an gluttonous amount of faith in players like Rodney and Farnsworth and losing game after game for the Rays because of that.

This offseason, the Rays made one real bullpen addition, and that was Jamey Wright, a pitcher with ability but certainly not a late-inning type of arm. The fact that the Rays had made just a few minor changes to their bullpen group from last year should have raised an immediate red flag for all of us–but instead we were blinded by how good Rodney had been and believed msiguidedly that the Rays bullpen would come through again. The marvel of the Rays’ bullpen and the Rays in general has not been that they have acquired such great players but that they have been able to stay so successful even as the names change. It’s time for the Rays to stop putting irrational faith in the byproducts of the process has been successful for them and instead return to the mentality that made that process work so perfectly to begin with.

“We’ve got to keep putting the guys out there at the appropriate times and wait for it to work,” he said. “There is no other way to do it. There’s no other options. This is the way it has to work. And you’ve got stay with it and show support.”

It seems like there is a hint of desperation in those comments and they’re certainly not positive, but Maddon refused to acknowledge the possibility of removing Rodeny from the closer role and believed that all the Rays can do is wait for him to turn himself around. Maddon did address other bullpen decisions following the game.

Still, there were questions. Why not bring Joel Peralta back for the 10th after he threw eight pitches to finish the ninth? Because of cumulative workload. Why have the lefty Ramos face the right-handed DeRosa? Because he actually considered it a favorable matchup. Why go to Farnsworth rather than Josh Lueke, whom he entrusted in a key situation Monday (though with bad results)? Lueke had already warmed up too much. And why not walk the dangerous Bautista — who earlier homered off Hellickson — with a base open and have Farnsworth face (the also dangerous) Edwin Encarnacion with the bases loaded? Because “that’s a tough position to put your pitcher in” and he preferred Farnsworth pitch Bautista carefully.

I don’t really understand “Lueke had warmed up too much,” but other than that, those are pretty valid reasons. But that doesn’t change the fact that Maddon is going out there with pitchers who are not the Rays’ best right now in critical situations and losing himself games in the process. Nevertheless, Ben Zobrist believes that his teammates are just going through a rough patch and will be just fine and Kyle Farnsworth shared a similar sentiment.

“There’s no question we’ve been spoiled here for a long time so, sure, the expectations are always higher when you’ve been that good in the past,” Ben Zobrist said. “I think realistically every team’s bullpen is going to go through a rough patch. That’s just something they’re working through right now.”

“You’ve just got to keep on going,” Farnsworth said. “These days are going to come and hopefully, eventually, we’re going to come out of it. … The talent is certainly down there. We’ve done it before. We just have to keep our heads up and just keep battling and just keep going at it.”

For the Rays, these are their guys, and after all the success they’ve had, you want to keep trusting them and believe that they’ll find a way to break out of this horrible slump. However, right now we’re reaching the point of insanity–doing the same misguided thing over and over yet expecting divergent results–and something has to be done. Joe Maddon and the Rays are refusing to accept the reality right now. How many more times will they lose games because of too much faith in struggling players that may never turn themselves around?