The Yankees pitching staff has done well for me in fantasy the past two days, what with a combined 15 and 1/3 scoreless innings from Burnett and Sabathia. Conversely, I’m glad that I don’t have K-Rod on either of my fantasy teams. I’m also glad I haven’t watched the past two Mets games, and Bobby Parnell’s first ML start is the only reason I’m tuning in at the moment.

K-Rod is regressing in a spectacular fashion. The first half of the year was not his true performance level, but even I didn’t expect him to have a stretch like this. Everyone was praising Minaya early this year for getting K-Rod at a “bargain” price, but it’s only going to look worse and worse as the contract runs its course, if this disturbing trend line continues:

Fangraphs

K-Rod’s XFIP by year:

2004: 2.63
2005: 2.97
2006: 3.22
2007: 3.53
2008: 3.71
2009: 4.27

XFIP, according to Hardball Times:

Expected Fielding Independent Pitching. This is an experimental stat that adjusts FIP and “normalizes” the home run component. Research has shown that home runs allowed are pretty much a function of flyballs allowed and home park, so xFIP is based on the average number of home runs allowed per outfield fly. Theoretically, this should be a better predicter of a pitcher’s future ERA.

So yeah, K-Rod is only going to get worse, so his signing can be put in the corner with Oliver Perez’s. Oh, and the Angels’ closer this year is tied for the league lead. Saves and closers as a whole are such a joke (except Mariano Rivera).

Let me repeat that. Francisco Rodriguez walked Mariano Rivera — a 38-year old pitcher with 2 career at-bats who’s played in the American League his entire career — to force in a run. You can’t make this shit up. According to Wikipedia, this has now disqualified him for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

This was after two games where the Mets were outscored 14-1 and outhit 22-4. I thought I might not actually have to put the word “embarrassing” in the title for this blog post, as the Mets were only losing 3-2 for basically the entire game. It turns out they ended up only losing 4-2, but that final run was an all-too-fitting end to this debacle of a subway series. This is what happens when the lineup is “David Wright and Friends”, and the frontman doesn’t get a hit the entire series. Johan Santana missing the series didn’t help either.

I can’t wait until this team is fucking exploded at the end of year. I wanted more done last offseason, but now that they are flailing so spectacularly, I hope it means the explosion will be that much more complete. To be clear, I want Omar Minaya to be engulfed in the all-encompassing fire. Also to be clear, I don’t want Minaya to even try to salvage THIS season at this point. The only reason this season even looks salvageable is due to the NL East being the worst division in baseball. Not only are the Phillies the only team (barely) over .500, they are the only team with a positive run differential. Even the NL West owns the East at this point. So fucking sad.

Thank you, NoMaas, for allowing me to add this picture to the post.

Francisco Rodriguez a.k.a. K-Rod broke the single-season record for saves tonight with his 58th save. Too bad the save has been pretty much proven at this point to be a pointless, dumb stat that should stabbed repeatedly and left in the desert to bleed out. But I’m sure K-Rod loves it, as he will ride this feat to a massive contract this offseason. I’m not going to lie and say I wouldn’t love to have him on the Mets, but if it comes at the price of $15 million/year, it’s not worth it. Not even Mariano Rivera is worth that much, and K-Rod is not — and never will be — Mariano Rivera.

So here’s to you, K-Rod. I hope Hank Steinbrenner is dumb enough to throw a metric shitton of cash your way. And I hope the Mets are smart enough to spend the money on two or three good relievers instead of one overrated closer. I did appreciate all the saves you gave my fantasy team this year, though.