State of the Game: Baseball Needs the Fernando Rodney Experience
If baseball wants to work on its downtrodden image after the sign-stealing scandal, it better ensure MLB Free agents like Fernando Rodney land on a roster.
In less than a month, pitchers and catchers will gallop into spring training well-rested and ready to attack the 2020 season. Baseball, however, will limp into training camp ready to be attacked, after an off-season filled with sign-stealing scandals which lead to suspensions, fines, and terminated contracts.
Through the turmoil and uneasiness, the game needs a stabilizing force. The game needs a constant, one which can be found in the form of a middle-reliever who does not let age get in the way of success. What the game needs is a do-rag wearing, a tilted hat positioned, bow and arrow flinging, a menace on the mound.
Baseball needs MLB free agents like Fernando Rodney to find a team.
More from Call to the Pen
- Philadelphia Phillies, ready for a stretch run, bomb St. Louis Cardinals
- Philadelphia Phillies: The 4 players on the franchise’s Mount Rushmore
- Boston Red Sox fans should be upset over Mookie Betts’ comment
- Analyzing the Boston Red Sox trade for Dave Henderson and Spike Owen
- 2023 MLB postseason likely to have a strange look without Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals
The fact mid-January is turning to late-January and Rodney remains unsigned is a problem in itself and shows the game has serious issues aside from banging on trash cans and wearing buzzers under jerseys. A veteran of seventeen Major League seasons, Rodney has appeared in 951 career games, finishing more than half of them, and carrying a lifetime 3.80 Earned Run Average. He is no stranger to high leverage situations having successfully saved 327 games.
Rodney began last campaign with Oakland before ultimately joining the Washington Nationals bullpen in early June, becoming a major component in their bullpen resurrection. At the time of the signing, the Nationals were seven games under .500 and sitting in fourth place in the National League East. After being brought aboard Rodney collected seventeen holds and two saves and helped the Nats finish twenty-four games above .500 and enter the playoffs as the top wild card team.
Having gained the trust of his manager Rodney appeared in six games in the playoffs, including three in the World Series alone. And after the dust settled from that series, Fernando Rodney walked away with a ring and the Hall of Fame walked away with his glove.
Why is there no market for Fernando Rodney? Some will say his age, as he will turn 43 before the regular season starts this year. However, in his 40s Rodney has saved sixty-six games, proving he can still be effective. I am not suggesting he is the feared closer who saved a league-leading 48 games as an All-Star for the Seattle Mariners in 2014. And I know he is eight years removed from his 48 saves, 0.60 ERA, and fifth-place finish in the American League Cy Young voting, which he accomplished with the Tampa Bay Rays. I am saying he can still be run out to the mound and get big league hitters out at a convincing clip.
Related Story. Top potential landing spots for Kevin Pillar. light
Some writers might say MLB free agents like Fernando Rodney will be “plucked off the scrap heap” and signed to a minor league contract with an invitation to spring training. This writer says, for the good of the game, he needs to be escorted off magic mountain and inserted into somebody’s bullpen, in time for Opening Day. Baseball needs his youthful, if not youth invoked, exuberance to help calm the winds of what could be a stormy spring training.