The baseball world officially met Francisco Rodriguez in October 2002 when, thanks to a loophole in MLB's postseason roster rules, Rodriguez was added to the Angels' ledger for their ALDS series against the Yankees. A few weeks later the Angels had won their first World Series title and the legend of K-Rod was born.
Rodriguez is a free agent now and has some kind of reputation as a big game pitcher -- at least, I've read that a few times lately -- but I don't know whether that's really true. It is true that he was almost unhittable in 2002, but he hasn't been especially dominant in five playoff series since then.
| Year | IP | H | ER | BB | K | ERA | K/BB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | 18.2 | 10 | 4 | 5 | 28 | 1.98 | 5.60 |
| Since | 13.0 | 17 | 7 | 9 | 13 | 4.85 | 1.44 |
Neither set of data is a particularly large sample, but there's hardly conclusive evidence that Rodriguez is any sort of big game pitcher, and it might be easier to make an argument to the contrary. I won't suggest that he should be judged by his last thirteen postseason innings, but he certainly shouldn't get any bonus points for being a playoff star since reality doesn't seem to support that particular assertion.