Other than Rodney, seven pitchers had relief seasons with an ERA below 1.00 in 50 or more IP. Their average ERA the next season was 2.81, still very good–after all, you have to be an excellent pitcher to have a season like that. When we expand it to bullpen arms who managed a season with an ERA of 1.50 or below in 50 IP, we have 59 pitchers, 54 pitchers of whom played a significant number of games the next season, and a similar result, an average of 3.14. The median value is 2.96 and is more indicative of the average value in this case because Hung-Chih Kuo‘s ERA after his 1.20 ERA season was 9.00 in 27 appearances. Rodney’s 5.40 ERA would be the highest value of any pitcher other than Kuo, with only Shigetoshi Hasegawa and Rafael Betancourt also registering ERAs over 5.00. Only six even had ERAs over 4.00. If the annals of baseball history tell us anything, Rodney can’t possibly be this bad the entire season. And if Rodney keeps struggling to this extent, it wouldn’t be regression to the mean but an utter collapse.

I know every year a few players get snubbed, and its more a result of the fact every team has to have one representative.  The White Sox and the Royals are to blame for Soriano’s snub job.

Joakim Soria from the Royals actually deserved to make the team, so I don’t want to pound on him too hard, and while I like Matt Thornton from the White Sox (who throws pure cheese) the fact that he made it was a result of every team needed a representative, not because he deserved it.

• Soriano has the 2nd most saves in the American League, and has done it in the least amount of appearances of anyone in the top 5 in saves with only 31.
• Soriano has the 3rd lowest ERA of anyone in the top 10 in saves, behind only Mariano Rivera (All Star) and Jose Valverde (All Star)
• He has the 2nd fewest walks of anyone in the top 10 in saves with 5 total walks

I realize the reason why he got the snub job (thanks Thornton) but the reasoning behind his snub doesn’t make it any less egregious.

The Rays scored 4 in the ninth off of declining HOF’er Mariano Rivera for the W.  

						1		2		3		4		5		6		7		8		9				R		H		E
				TB (29-28)		0		0		0		0		2		3		0		0		4				9		9		4
				NYY (32-23)		0		1		0		1		1		0		0		2		2				7		7		2
			W: Howell (1-2, 2.22); L: Rivera (0-2, 3.47); SV: Choate (3)  HR: TB: Zobrist (11), Aybar, W (4). NYY: Teixeira (17), Rodriguez, A (8).

5.2 IP, 2 H, 3 R, 1 ER, 5 BB, 3 K was the final line for the Rays young ace.  He gave up the early HR to ARoid and then settled down after that.  The Rays though were just awful in the field, and only one of Price’s runs counted.  

Here is a strike/ball chart from DRaysBay and BrooksBaseball.Net.  

Reid Brignac who is seeing some extended MLB time due to our entire IF being on the DL committed two of those errors himself.   Reid is hitting .217 now in the majors and if he wants to keep a spot on the big league team once Jason Bartlett comes back, he will need to at least improve his fielding.  

The two big story lines from the game though, had to be Ben Zobrist once again delivering in the clutch with his 11th HR, and Pinch Runner Andy Sonnastine scoring the go ahead run in the 9th.   Sonnastine has been a jack of all trades this season, pinch hitting and now pinch running.  His ability to contribute to the team on days when he is not pitching will certainly be factored into who is getting bumped from the rotation once Scott Kazmir returns from the DL.  Ben Zobrist continues to be the teams 2nd best hitter.  He now has 11 HR on the year to go along with 33 RBI.  He plays just about any position on the field for us, and his HR to AB ratio is at 1 for every 11.8 AB’s.