With Tigers' Rodney, it's substance over style

Fernando Rodney must know how it feels to be mayor. You never can win with the constituents.

There always is something for which the citizenry can blame its civic boss: budgets, services, inevitable miscues, etc., and sometimes worse, as local history will attest.

Likewise, there always is some grievance Tigers fans have against the man who became the closer this year: walks and hits, for example, which he sometimes allows in ninth-inning efforts that aren't always 1-2-3 stints.

But what matters to a team, of course, is whether the job gets done. And Rodney has been a mission-accomplished kind of pitcher: Eight of eight save opportunities have been handled successfully.

Never mind that fans seem to flip a coin when Rodney comes in to pitch: Do we watch the ninth inning or opt for a Freddy Krueger movie?

Look at the numbers beyond those successful saves and you see the anxiety is fairly baseless.

No, it's not always pretty

Rodney's ERA (3.50) is neither sparkling nor embarrassing. And his WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched), a better barometer of what a pitcher is responsible for, is a solid 1.06.

By contrast, Bobby Jenks of the White Sox has a 2.40 ERA and 1.13 WHIP, and owns a strikeouts-to-walks ratio similar to Rodney's. Kerry Wood of the Indians has horrific numbers: 7.71 ERA, 1.86 WHIP, with 16 hits and four home runs in 14 innings.

What matters, as Todd Jones taught fans through the years, is not always how a ninth inning is closed -- but whether the team is shaking hands afterward.

Rodney's style, for sure, isn't confused with the mow-'em-down ways of Joe Nathan of the Twins, or, before he became a mortal, Mariano Rivera of the Yankees.

He succeeds mostly because of a change-up that (a) Rodney can control better than his fastball; and (b) is fairly unhittable even when a batter is sitting on it. The change-up got him out of trouble a couple of times this week, including Thursday, when Rodney came within an inch of blowing a save against the Rangers.

Eye on the prize: Free agency

Make no mistake: The Tigers would love to have an intimidator who pretty much has that game's save in his pocket before he reaches the mound. And they believe they soon will, in either Joel Zumaya or Ryan Perry, and probably by next season.

Zumaya and Perry are closer to the shut-the-door brand of closer teams covet. But they aren't likely to dislodge Rodney this season, at least if he keeps recording saves, no matter how nerve-wracking they might be.

Next year will be different. Rodney is six months from free agency. And, as long as his numbers hang in the general vicinity of his 2009 statistics, as well as those racked up during his career, the 32-year-old right-hander will be signing a nice, fat, multi-year contract with some team aching for a closer or set-up man as reliable as Rodney, no matter what the Tigers camp thinks of his tension-inducing ways.

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